Algunas personas recitan una oración de agradecimiento por el tiempo que pasaron en la cárcel del condado de San Francisco. Entre ellos está un hombre del Área de la Bahía al que llamaremos Carlos para respetar su solicitud de anonimato. 

“Gracias a Dios que yo me salí,” Carlos dijo, 29. “Busqué una mejor vida porque me acerqué a buenas personas, me acerqué a personas que me orientaron, me acerqué a personas que querían en realidad verme triunfar en la vida.”

Esas personas eran proveedoras de programas en español en las cárceles del condado. Carlos es de Honduras y llegó a San Francisco por un trabajo prometido que nunca se materializó. En cambio, vendió drogas.

Todo eso cambió cuando fue encarcelado en la cárcel del condado de San Francisco por cargos relacionados con drogas hace casi cuatro años. Cuando era encarcelado, conoció a un trabajador hispanohablante de ReSET Justice Collaborative – una de las organizaciones comunitarias que trabajan con el director de los programas de la cárcel para brindar capacitación vocacional, cursos educativos, tratamiento de trastornos por uso de sustancias, clases de manejo de la ira, actividades culturales, clases de inglés y observancias religiosas.

“Ellos fueron a visitarme a la cárcel. Y desde ahí ellos me suscribieron a lugares donde podían ayudarme,” Carlos dijo.“Luego de que salí me ayudaron a conseguir un trabajo que aún todavía lo tengo. Tengo dos años trabajando en este trabajo acá. No volví a regresar nunca más, nunca más a mezclarme con ventas de droga. … No me he vuelto a meter al Tenderloin y me ha servido mucho porque le he traído más tranquilidad a mi familia.”

Pero desde entonces, los programas ofrecidos en español en la cárcel del condado de San Francisco se han vuelto prácticamente inexistentes porque los cierres de rutina causados ​​por la escasez de personal han hecho prácticamente imposible impartir clases. Incluso con los diputados trabajando en turnos obligatorios de 16 horas, no hay suficientes para acompañar a las personas que administran sesiones de rehabilitación y otros programas de capacitación a las cárceles. El 2 de febrero, numerosos proveedores de servicios sociales para la población latina encarcelada imploraron a la Junta de Supervisión del Departamento del Sheriff en su reunión que los ayudará a obtener acceso a la cárcel.

Parecía que el liderazgo de la cárcel respondió al llamado público la semana siguiente anunciando un nuevo programa de recuperación del uso de sustancias y una clase de arte terapia ofrecida en español; sin embargo, un portavoz de la cárcel dijo que han estado planificando las clases desde octubre pasado. Sin embargo, algunos trabajadores carcelarios que llevan mucho tiempo expresaron dudas de que los programas durarían más de unas pocas semanas.

La falta de programación en español es un problema crecientemente grave ya que el encarcelamiento de latinos ha aumentado desde el lanzamiento el junio pasado de una ofensiva policial contra las drogas en los vecindarios de Tenderloin y sur de Market.

Según datos del Departamento del Sheriff, del 1 de junio al 10 de noviembre de 2023 (el más nuevo disponible), el 42% de las personas ingresadas en la cárcel del condado de San Francisco por cargos relacionados con drogas eran latinas, en comparación con el 30% que eran personas negras y el 28% que eran personas blancas. Y como Carlos vio hace años, algunas personas necesitan comunicar su necesidad de ayuda desesperadamente.

“Hay personas ahí que tienen hasta problemas mentales, problemas mentales que no pueden lidiar. ¿Y cómo se los van a contar a alguien que hable inglés y no entiende?” Carlos dijo. 

El año pasado, la policía también se dirigió a personas por simple consumo de drogas para motivarlos a recibir tratamiento para el trastorno por uso de sustancias, según funcionarios municipales y oficiales. Sin embargo, desde entonces, el programa de tratamiento de la cárcel, Road to Recovery, ha estado disponible sólo en inglés, a pesar del interés expresado por parte de la población latino.

Según datos del Departamento de Salud Pública de la ciudad, de septiembre de 2022 a septiembre de 2023, los Servicios de Salud Penitenciario evaluaron que 380 pacientes latinos encarcelados tenían un trastorno para consumir opioides. De ellos, 209 buscaron tratamientos a través de medicamentos como buprenorfina o metadona.

No está claro cuántos de ellos no recibieron programación de tratamiento porque eran monolingües de español, ya que no rastrean datos sobre preferencias de idioma.

Pero en un caso en octubre pasado, la proveedora de servicios Joanna Hernández del Latino Task Force, una asociación con sede en San Francisco de más de tres docenas de organizaciones comunitarias, dijo que fue testigo de un grupo de hombres en el programa del Road to Recovery en la cárcel del condado No. 3 en San Bruno. Hernández dijo que de los 46 hombres en el programa, 20 hablaban español y apenas podían entender la clase.

“A veces, simplemente se sientan y entienden algunas de las palabras, pero si no, simplemente van a sus celdas,” dijo Hernández en inglés. “Y luego me lo comprobé con el personal y me dijo: ‘No tengo personal que hable español y apesta porque siguen poniendo a personas que no hablan el idioma en este módulo del programa.’

“Es algo que pasa mucho dentro de las cárceles. Entonces, la gente está volviendo al mismo lío, volviendo al mismo comportamiento – si no volviendo peor, porque fueron confinados y arrancados de su familia, de sus hijos, de su religión, de todo.”

Ali Riker, directora de programas del Departamento del Sheriff, dijo que estaba consciente de que los hispanohablantes van a Road to Recovery, el programa en inglés. Dijo que cree que esto sucedió porque sabían suficiente inglés como para solicitar acceso al programa.

“No prohibimos la participación a las personas que lo solicitaron,” dijo Riker. “Sé que no es lo ideal. Estamos haciendo nuestro mejor esfuerzo. ¿Es suficiente? Ya sabes, necesitamos más. Definitivamente necesitamos más recursos.”

La Cárcel #3 del Condado de San Francisco en San Bruno es uno de los lugares donde los que son encarcelados pueden ir al programa Road to Recovery, un programa de rehabilitación para trastornos por uso de sustancias. El programa no se ofrece en español.

Read this story in English.

Hernández se unió a los otros proveedores de servicios sociales latinos en la Junta de Supervisión del Departamento del Sheriff el 2 de febrero. Dijo que ha experimentado el caos causado por la escasez de personal.

“Cuando llegas a facilitar tu clase, te dicen: ‘Lo siento, no llegamos al mínimo, el programa está cancelado’,” dijo Hernández. También dijo que descuidar las oportunidades vocacionales y de rehabilitación en la cárcel es contraproducente para los objetivos declarados de la ciudad.

“Sé que la gente quiere seguridad pública,” ella dijo. “Y sé que la gente quiere que cese la venta de drogas y que les roben o les golpeen los coches. ¿Pero qué hacemos encarcelando a la gente y no reciben ninguna rehabilitación?”

Los efectos negativos a largo plazo son especialmente tristes para los jóvenes encarcelados. Del 1 de junio al 10 de noviembre, hubo 10 veces más latinos de entre 18 y 24 años ingresados ​​en cárceles de San Francisco que las personas blancas o negras entre la misma edad. Y los defensores dicen que los más jóvenes necesitan especialmente programas de reinserción social, ya que los antecedentes penales les impiden adquirir habilidades laborales, avances profesionales y oportunidades económicas.

Los representantes del grupo comunitario dijeron a los comisionados de supervisión que ellos y otros proveedores de programas están en la mejor posición para ayudar a cambiar estas vidas.

“Somos culturalmente competentes,” dijo Bianca Sánchez, administradora de casos de Bay Area Community Resources. “Implementamos un enfoque centrado en la sanación y tenemos una perspectiva informada sobre el trauma, lo que nos hace más equipados para brindar servicios y apoyo dentro de las cárceles. Como profesionales capacitados, podemos brindar servicios efectivos de intervención, tratamiento y rehabilitación para romper los ciclos de encarcelamiento.”

Julie Soo, presidenta de la junta de supervisión, dijo que la solicitud estaba en consonancia con una legislación municipal de décadas de antigüedad, que ella ayudó a escribir,que garantiza el derecho a la igualdad de acceso a los servicios de la ciudad para todos los residentes de San Francisco, incluidos aquellos que saben poco el inglés. Sin embargo, dijo, un presupuesto “muy conservador” del Departamento del Sheriff requerirá “establecer prioridades.”

Llegan nuevos programas pero persisten las dudas

Menos de una semana después de la reunión de la junta de supervisión, se lanzó una nueva clase de recuperación del abuso de sustancias en español llamado Living in Balance; También se lanzó una clase de arte terapia en español.

Riker dijo que es optimista de que las clases programadas se mantendrán estables porque desde hace unos meses, el Departamento del Sheriff ha realizado programas ininterrumpidos de 9 a 11 a.m. en el anexo de la cárcel, donde recientemente han sido transferidos un gran número de reclusos que hablan español.

Otros no son tan optimistas como Riker. Hernández dijo que las dos horas para programas compiten con el tiempo al aire libre, llamadas y visitas a abogados, entre otras actividades, y está muy lejos de las seis a siete horas diarias de programación de tratamiento de adicciones que recibían los reclusos en el pasado. Y un trabajador que ha trabajado en la cárcel durante mucho tiempo, que habló bajo condición de anonimato, dijo que cree que el nuevo plan de estudios es para impresionar.

“Hacen cosas, ya sabes, para las cámaras, y luego, cuando termina, cuando nadie mira, todo vuelve a ser como era”, dijo el trabajador, y agregó: “Le doy dos semanas.”

Sylvie Pagan de NoVA, el No Violence Alliance Program, que atiende a personas que regresan a la comunidad después de estar en la cárcel por un delito violento o múltiples arrestos, dijo a la junta de supervisión el 2 de febrero que su organización también estaba lanzando un programa para latinos en la cárcel la semana que viene. Pero, dijo, “esto es sólo una semilla en un gran balde de muchas necesidades que necesitamos para la comunidad”.

Riker dijo que espera trabajar con más organizaciones comunitarias y, con los recursos escasos a su disposición, está implorando a grupos externos aun más ayuda.

Riker alentó a cualquier organización comunitaria enfocada en brindar servicios a hispanohablantes a enviar un correo electrónico a William Cooper, gerente de servicios de rehabilitación del Departamento del Sheriff, a william.cooper@sfgov.org.

Presupuesto de la alcaldesa da prioridad a la policía

La población carcelaria creció de 800 personas en junio a más de 1.100 hoy debido a la ofensiva policial contra las drogas. La situación exacerbó un nivel ya crítico de escasez de personal en la oficina del sheriff que, según los informes últimos, necesita contratar a 207 personas para dotar de personal a su contingente de 920 puestos. El año pasado, la abogada de derechos civiles Yolanda Huang demandó a San Francisco en nombre de personas encarceladas que afirmaban haber sufrido problemas de salud graves por la falta de luz solar después de años en confinamiento. Esa cuestión aún está en litigio, dijo Huang.

“La solución es que, si la alcaldesa quiere encarcelar a la gente, y no estoy hablando de si debería o no debería suceder, entonces tiene que pagar por ello,” dijo Huang. “Ella tiene que dotar de personal completo a la cárcel. Y si no va a dotar de personal completo a la cárcel, entonces no es necesario que encarcelen a estas personas. Es muy simple. Si los vas a alojar y controlarlos, entonces tienes que hacerlo bien. Y no lo son.”

Y no sólo las cárceles están sufriendo. La oficina del Defensor Público de San Francisco demandó al Tribunal Superior del Condado de San Francisco por retrasos en los juicios, alegando que infringía el derecho de sus clientes a un juicio rápido. El tribunal dijo que los retrasos en los juicios se deben a que la oficina del sheriff está extendida demasiado en las cárceles y el Salón de Justicia.

Sin embargo, la alcaldesa de San Francisco London Breed recortó el presupuesto del sheriff en $8 millones para 2023-24, dando al departamento un total anual de $292 millones. Pero sí aumentó el presupuesto del Departamento de Policía de San Francisco en $61 millones para 2023-24 y otros $11 millones el año siguiente fiscal para un total de $786 millones. Esos fondos se destinarán a la contratación de 500 funcionarios más, horas extras y salarios más altos negociados bajos un nuevo contrato sindical.

Además, en junio pasado, los supervisores de la ciudad respaldaron una resolución del supervisor Matt Dorsey solicitando que el Departamento de Recursos Humanos de la ciudad redactara una política de bonificaciones para los policías recién contratados que competiría con otras agencias policiales en el norte de California. El 16 de enero, Breed y el jefe de policía, Bill Scott, emitieron un comunicado de prensa conjunto promocionando sus éxitos. El comunicado anunció que en febrero y mayo se graduaron tres clases de la academia de policía con un total de 60 reclutas. El logro se debió a un salario inicial más alto y procesos de prueba y contratación simplificadas, según el comunicado. No se mencionó ninguna bonificación de contratación.

Mientras todo eso, supuestamente hay miedo en Departamento del Sheriff que las bonificaciones para firmar en otras agencias podrían atraer aun más diputados, incluyendo un bono de firma ampliamente publicitado de $75,000 del Departamento de Policía de Alameda para nuevos reclutas o contrataciones laterales de otros departamentos de policía.

Sylvie Sturm informó esta historia mientras participaba en la beca de datos 2023 del Centro Annenberg de Periodismo de Salud de la USC, que brindó capacitación, tutoría y financiación para apoyar este proyecto.

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In California, the governor appoints superior court judges to fill seats across 58 counties. Terms are typically six years, and judges keep their positions unless they’re recalled, which happens rarely, or someone decides to run against them in a local election. Usually, judges don’t face challengers.

But a pair of San Francisco Superior Court judges are running to stay on the bench in the upcoming March 5 election. The last time sitting judges faced such challenges here was in the June 2018 primary election, and the challengers lost.

Voters might be wondering why they’re being asked to make this decision.

“What’s confusing is that we tend to think of the legal system and justices as being kind of impartial referees,” said Keally McBride, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. “That, and politics shouldn’t be involved in the selection of judges, and politics shouldn’t be guiding why judges make particular decisions. And so, in some ways, having any kind of judicial election goes against our notion of the judiciary as the third branch of government, which stands outside of the normal competitive democratic system.”

San Francisco voters are being asked to decide between incumbent judge Michael Isaku Begert and his challenger Chip Zecher, and between incumbent judge Patrick S. Thompson and his challenger Jean Myungjin Roland. (Read more about these four candidates and listen to the audio statements they submitted in response to Public Press questions in our voter guide.)

The incumbents have received campaign support from lawyers and other judges. The challengers call for holding more defendants in custody as they await trial and for tougher sentencing. They have received money from funders supporting campaigns for several ballot propositions and backing a slate of candidates seeking seats on the Democratic County Central Committee, the official leadership of the local Democratic Party.

McBride said that because of sentencing guidelines, judges have less discretion than they may appear to have: “I would argue that the D.A.’s office probably has more to do with who gets charged, and who does not get charged than your average superior court judge.”

“They are pointing to specific decisions that these judges have made, like, oh, this person who had this much fentanyl was let go, and therefore this proves that they are really not at all tough on crime,” she said. “But when you look at the overall judicial record, my understanding is that there’s nothing significantly different about these two judges.”

Listen to this “Civic” episode to learn more about voting for judges, how these contests reflect political trends on local and national levels, and how California sentencing reform initiatives are coming up against calls for increased policing and criminal prosecution. The episode is followed by audio statements submitted by each candidate in response to questions from the Public Press.

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Numerous drug policy experts and addictions specialists from across the country — as close as UCSF and as far away as Rhode Island — publicly oppose a San Francisco ballot measure that would compel adult welfare recipients to undergo drug screening before collecting cash benefits.

And efforts to publicize the measure have brought specialists who don’t always agree about addiction treatment practices to the same side of the debate.

Keith Humphreys, Stanford professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, has said San Francisco has been too permissive with people with substance use disorder. 

That led a local Proposition F campaigner to believe that he was an ally, Humphreys said.

“It was sent to me by someone in politics in San Francisco asking me, you know, do I want to endorse this?” he said. “And the answer is no.

“Being poor is not a crime. If this is something that is important to do, we should be doing it with people who threaten public safety, and not people who need this money to eat and pay their rent.”

Mayor London Breed’s Proposition F — Illegal Substance Dependence Screening and Treatment for Recipients of City Public Assistance would require single adults aged 65 and under who have no dependent children and receive County Adult Assistance Program benefits to participate in drug screening, evaluation and treatment to be eligible for cash benefits.

Recipients who decline screening or treatment would be ineligible for monthly cash benefits of $105 for people experiencing homelessness and $697 for housed residents. Benefit recipients who lack housing would receive 30 days of guaranteed shelter access. Those in housing would receive 30 days of rent paid directly to a landlord, with potential extensions for eviction prevention.

Proposition F has the backing of some wealthy donors in the tech sector, most notably Chris Larsen, a tech billionaire best known for co-founding Ripple and a major donor to political groups Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, Progress SF and GrowSF. 

Larsen has spent nearly $1 million on this election, including $250,000 on Proposition F, donations to various Democratic County Central Committee candidates running against incumbents, and $100,000 in one San Francisco Superior Court contest to unseat an incumbent judge.

Larsen is also a personal champion of Breed and her agenda.

“You’ve got a Board of Supervisors that doesn’t work with the mayor, that’s a huge problem,” Larsen said in an interview with Bloomberg News last fall. “And unfortunately, that can only be addressed in the ’24 election.”

A Failed Strategy

Breed said threatening to rescind cash benefits would compel low-income residents with substance use disorder into treatment. She announced the strategy last September after a plan to coerce people into treatment through arrests failed.

“The arrests that we’re making for public intoxication, people are not accepting help,” Breed said. “And so now it’s time to make sure that we are cutting off resources that continue to allow this behavior to occur without the accountability, without someone involved in a treatment program that could lead to a better life.”

According to retired Redondo Beach Police Lt. Diane Goldstein, the mistake San Francisco’s and other cities’ leaders make is that they don’t adequately fund programs that would effectively support public health, public safety and mental health.

Instead, she said, they “wait until things are so bad that they call the cops to fix the problem with the wrong set of tools.” 

Goldstein is now executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a group of police, prosecutors, judges and other criminal justice professionals focusing on drug policy and criminal justice.

“Frankly, I just don’t know if the public is ever going to understand it,” Goldstein said. “Because they don’t understand that law enforcement should have never been tasked with enforcing a public health issue going back years. But the reason we do is, we’re the only people that answered the phone in the middle of the night.”

Goldstein said there are positive ways to involve police officers in helping more people access substance use disorder treatment programs. For example, the San Francisco Police Department was involved in a program in 2017 that brought law enforcement officers, street teams, case managers, public health clinicians and justice system professionals together to enroll repeat low-level drug offenders into community-based health and social services as an alternative to jail and prosecution. But that was short-lived.

The Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion — aka LEAD and now called Let Everyone Advance with Dignity — was launched in 2011 by Seattle-based Purpose Dignity Action, then called the Public Defender Association, which responds to public safety issues by facilitating inter-agency coordination. It has since expanded throughout the country.

In 2017, San Francisco received $6 million to implement LEAD from the Board of State and Community Corrections. But it stumbled after two years despite showing significantly lowered rates of misdemeanor and felony arrests, and felony cases among enrollees. 

One of the main problems was getting buy-in from law enforcement officers, according to an evaluation by the California State University, Long Beach, School of Criminology.

It was a major shift to go from arresting people to diverting them into social programs, according to interviews with officers and court personnel quoted in the report. As one officer said, “I’ve been around…cops for almost 30 years, and it’s not going to be like — it’s not going to be, push a button or snap your fingers and everybody is going to go, ‘Okay, we’ll do it different.’”

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott expressed willingness to revisit the program at a Police Commission meeting last June, but it’s unclear whether there have been efforts to revive it. The Police Department did not respond to inquiries about this subject.

Lisa Daugaard, co-executive director of Purpose Dignity Action, said leaders can no longer ignore the fact that coercing people into treatment for substance use disorders is counterproductive because it doesn’t address underlying circumstances.

“It comes from an understandable impulse to help people get better. That is not how people get better,” Daugaard said. “Imagine what happens if they don’t do that thing. So now you have people in an even more miserable situation than they are right now who definitely are going to be turning to the illicit economy to get their income. And that’s not good for anybody.”

She said she understands the pressures city leaders face regarding visible drug sales, use and addiction.

“The problem that we’ve got is that public officials under public pressure need something to point to that seems like action,” Daugaard said. “They don’t know how people get better, and that impulse to quick action can be very, very destructive.”

She said that’s why her organization “spends a ton of time” ensuring that their inter-agency approach visibly improves the situation on the streets for retail businesses and that police are satisfied with their recommendations.

Relapse Not Considered

San Francisco Human Services Agency Executive Director Trent Rhorer said last September that about 20% of the 5,200 people who collect County Adult Assistance Program benefits self-disclosed last year that they were suffering from substance use disorder. 

“It’s a population that has not availed themselves of treatment,” and this measure would lead to a “positive change” in their lives, Rhorer said.

Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine and public health at Brown University, where he conducts research on the drug epidemic and its intersection with policing and criminal justice, said Proposition F does not account for the fact that addiction is an inherently relapsing disease, even among those who willingly enter medically assisted treatment. 

“The clinical odds of someone getting on the medication and staying on the medication are very low without repeated attempts,” del Pozo said.

He also applied his perspective as a 19-year veteran of the New York City Police Department and the former chief of police of Burlington, Vermont, where he organized the city’s response to the opioid crisis.

“The cop in me says that if you could get them to stay on for five years, and that’s the facts, try it. That is just not the world,” he said. “People will fail out of this and lose their assistance, lose what they need to survive.” 

Addiction specialists agree that the measure does not address the circumstances surrounding harmful substance use.

Dr. Marlene Martin, UCSF associate professor and founding director of the addiction care team at San Francisco General Hospital, was among four medical professionals who gathered for a Feb. 2 press conference to speak out against Proposition F.

She said her patients have told her they use substances because of housing instability, trauma, poverty, discrimination and untreated mental illness. She added that threatening to halt or cut city benefits will erode the trust it takes for recipients to disclose their substance use and seek addiction treatment.

“I have seen addiction and overdose worsen when people lose support systems, and that is what Proposition F threatens to do,” Martin said.

Laura Thomas, senior director of HIV and harm reduction policy at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said at the Feb. 2 press conference that Proposition F does not increase access to substance use disorder treatment. And while her organization provides a path to recovery for numerous clients every year, she said, the city is reducing its funding.

“If the Human Services Agency wants to connect people to treatment, I highly recommend that instead of putting this wasteful and cynical initiative on the ballot, that they add a couple of linkage counselors to connect people to medications for opioid use disorder including buprenorphine and methadone,” Thomas said.

Legal Troubles on the Horizon

The measure could bring the city legal troubles. Mission Local reported Feb. 20 that attorney Kerianne Steele representing Service Employees International Union Local 1021 sent a letter to the city attorney claiming that Proposition F violates the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act, which mandates that an employer confer with union employees on matters related to employment conditions.

Steele says Proposition F would adversely affect employees since it would lead to increased workloads at a time when the mayor is calling for budget cuts despite staff shortages across the Human Services Agency. The letter states also that there could be an increase to threats against staff as recipients are denied benefits, yet the measure includes no provisions for increased security.

And, while the measure anticipates enrolling an estimated 1,700 new clients into treatment, the SEIU letter states that, as of its writing, San Francisco had only 46 treatment beds available, according to the city’s tracking system. Meanwhile, the mayor’s budget proposes to cut city funding for drug treatment and mental health services.

The letter demands that the Proposition F be removed from the ballot. But the deadline to do that passed in November, according to the San Francisco Department of Elections.

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Some people recite a prayer of gratitude for the time they spent in San Francisco County Jail. Among them is a Bay Area resident we’ll call Carlos to respect his request for anonymity.

“Thank God,” said Carlos, 29. “I sought a better life because I got close to good people who guided me. I got close to people who really wanted to see me succeed in life.”

Those people were Spanish-language county jail reentry program providers. Carlos came to San Francisco from Honduras, pursuing promised work that never materialized. Instead, he sold drugs.

That all changed nearly four years ago when he was booked into San Francisco County Jail on drug violations. Once incarcerated, he met Spanish-speaking staff from the ReSET Justice Collaborative — one of myriad community organizations that work with the jail’s program director to provide vocational training, educational courses, substance use disorder treatment, anger management counseling, cultural activities, English classes and religious observances.

“They went to visit me in jail, and from there they signed me up to the places where they could help me,” Carlos said. “Because of how much they taught me, after I left, they helped me get a job that I still have. I have been working in this job here for two years. I never went back to being involved with drug dealing again. I have not gone into the Tenderloin again, and it has helped me a lot because it has brought more peace of mind to my family.”

But Spanish-language programming at San Francisco’s County Jail has since become virtually nonexistent as routine lockdowns caused by staff shortages have made it practically impossible to hold classes. Even while deputies work mandatory 16-hour shifts, there aren’t enough of them to escort people who administer rehabilitation sessions and other training programs into the jails. On Feb. 2, numerous social service providers for the Latinx incarcerated population implored the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board at its monthly meeting to help them gain access to the jail.

It appeared that jail leadership responded to the public call-out the following week by announcing a new Spanish-language substance use recovery program and art therapy class, however a jail spokesperson said the classes had been in the works since last October. Nevertheless, some longtime jail workers expressed doubt that the programs would last for more than a few weeks.

The lack of Spanish-language programming is an increasingly dire problem since Latinx incarcerations have been on the rise since last June’s launch of a police crackdown on drugs in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods.

According to Sheriff’s Department data, from June 1 to Nov. 10, 2023 (the most recent available), 42% of people booked in San Francisco County Jail on drug-related charges were Latinx compared with 30% who were Black and 28% who were white. And as Carlos witnessed years ago, some people desperately need to communicate their need for help.

“There are people there who have mental problems, mental problems that they cannot deal with, and how are they going to tell that to someone who knows only English and doesn’t understand?” Carlos said.

Last year’s police crackdown also targeted people for simple drug use as a means of encouraging them into substance use disorder treatment, according to city and law enforcement officials. Yet since then the jail’s treatment program, Road to Recovery, has been available only in English, despite an expressed interest in treatment from the Latinx population.

According to city Department of Public Health data, during the 12 months that ended in September 2023, Jail Health Services assessed 380 incarcerated Latinx patients as having an opioid use disorder. Of them, 209 sought treatments through medications such as buprenorphine or methadone.

It’s unclear how many of them lost out on treatment programming because they were monolingual Spanish speakers, since the data don’t track language preference. But in one instance last October, service provider Joanna Hernandez of the Latino Task Force, a San Francisco-based association of more than three dozen community-based organizations, said she witnessed a “pod” — a group of men assigned to a small congregation of cells — attending Road to Recovery at County Jail No. 3 in San Bruno. Hernandez said of the 46 men attending, 20 were Spanish speakers and could barely understand the curriculum.

“Sometimes they just sit and kind of understand some of the words but if not, they’ll just go to their cells,” Hernandez said. “And then I checked in with the staff, and he told me, ‘I don’t have Spanish-speaking staff and it sucks because they keep putting people who don’t speak the language in this program pod.’

“It’s something that happens a lot inside the jails. So, people are coming back to the same mess, back to the same behavior — if not coming back even worse, because they were confined and ripped from their family, their children, their religion, like everything.”

Ali Riker, director of programs for the Sheriff’s Department, said she was aware that Spanish speakers attended the English-language Road to Recovery program. She said she speculated that this happened because they had enough English proficiency to request access.

“We weren’t, like, barring people from participating who requested it,” Riker said. “I know it’s not ideal. We’re doing our best. Is it enough? You know, we need more. We definitely need more resources.”

Hernandez joined the other Latinx social service providers at the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board on Feb. 2. She said she’s experienced the chaos caused by short staffing.

“When you get there to facilitate your class, you’re told, ‘Sorry, we’re not at our minimum, program is cancelled,’” Hernandez said, adding that neglecting jail vocational and rehabilitation opportunities is counterproductive to the city’s stated goals. 

“I know that people want public safety,” she said. “And I know that people want drug sales to stop, their cars being robbed or bipped. But what are we doing locking people up and they’re not receiving any rehabilitation?”

Long-term negative effects are especially dismal for incarcerated youth. Latinx people aged 18 to 24 represented 10 times more drug-related bookings in San Francisco jail from June 1 to Nov. 10 than either their Black or white counterparts. And advocates say younger people especially need reentry programs since criminal records inhibit them from gaining work skills, career advancements and economic opportunities.

The community group representatives told the oversight commissioners that they and other program providers are best positioned to help turn these lives around.

“We are culturally competent,” said Bianca Sanchez, a case manager at Bay Area Community Resources. “We implement a healing-centered approach and have a trauma-informed lens, making us more equipped to provide services and support inside the jails. As trained professionals, we can provide the effective intervention, treatment and rehabilitation services to break the cycles of incarceration.”

Julie Soo, president of the oversight board, said the request was in keeping with decades-old city legislation enshrining the right to equal access to city services for all San Franciscans, including those with limited proficiency in English — legislation that she helped draft. But, she said, a “very conservative” Sheriff’s Department budget will require “setting up priorities.” 

New Programs Arriving but Doubts Remain

Less than a week after the oversight board meeting, a new Spanish-language version of a substance abuse recovery class called Living in Balance was launched as well as a Spanish-language art therapy class.

Riker said she’s optimistic that class scheduling will remain stable since the Sheriff’s Department has delivered programs uninterrupted from 9 to 11 a.m. in the jail annex — where a large number of Spanish-speaking inmates have recently been transferred — for a few months now.

Others are not as optimistic as Riker. Hernandez said the two hours a day compete with outdoor time, phone calls and lawyer visits, among other activities — and it’s a far cry from the six to seven hours a day of addiction treatment programming that inmates used to get. And a longtime jail worker speaking on condition of anonymity said they believe the new curriculum is just for show.

“They do stuff, you know, for the cameras, and then when it’s over with, when nobody’s looking, it goes back to how it was,” the worker said, adding, “I give it two weeks.”

Sylvie Pagan of NoVA, the No Violence Alliance Program, whose participants return to the community after serving time for a violent offense or multiple arrests, told the oversight board on Feb. 2 that her organization was also launching a Latino program in jail the next week. But, she said, “this is just a seed in a large bucket of many, many needs that we need for community.”

Riker said she’s eager to partner with more community organizations, and with the meager resources at her disposal, she’s imploring outside groups for even more help.

Riker encouraged any community-based organizations focused on providing volunteer services to the newcomer Spanish-speaking population to help by emailing William Cooper, rehabilitation services manager with the Sheriff’s Department, at william.cooper@sfgov.org.

Mayor’s Budget Prioritizes Police

Last year’s police crackdown on drugs caused the jail population to balloon from 800 people in June to more than 1,100 today. The situation exacerbated an already critical level of staff shortages at the sheriff’s office, which, according to the latest reports, needs to hire 207 people to fully staff its contingent of 920 positions.

Last year, civil rights attorney Yolanda Huang sued San Francisco on behalf of incarcerated people who claimed they suffered serious health problems from lack of sunlight after years of lockdowns. That issue is still being litigated, Huang said.

“The solution is, if the mayor wants to put people in jail — and I’m not talking about whether or not it should or should not happen — then she has to pay for it,” Huang said. “She has to fully staff the jail. And if she’s not going to fully staff the jail, then they need to not put these people in jail. It’s real simple. If you’re going to house them and control them, then you have to do it right. And they’re not.”

And it’s not just jails that are suffering. Gaps in duties normally assigned to sheriff’s deputies led the San Francisco Public Defender’s office to sue San Francisco County Superior Court over trial backlogs, claiming it infringed their clients’ right to a speedy trial. The court said trial delays were due to the sheriff’s office being overextended at the jails and the Hall of Justice.

Nevertheless, Mayor London Breed slashed the sheriff’s budget by $8 million for 2023-24 giving the department an annual total of $292 million. She did, however, increase the San Francisco Police Department’s budget by $61 million for 2023-24 and another $11 million the following fiscal year for a total of $786 million. That funding will go toward hiring 500 more officers, overtime and higher salaries negotiated under a new union contract.

Also, last June, city supervisors endorsed a resolution by Supervisor Matt Dorsey requesting that the city Human Resources Department draft a policy of hiring bonuses for police department recruits that would compete with other law enforcement agencies in Northern California.

On Jan. 16, Breed and Police Chief Bill Scott issued a joint press release touting their successes. The release announced that three police academy classes totaling 60 recruits were scheduled to graduate in February and May. The achievement was thanks to a higher starting pay and streamlined testing and hiring processes, the release stated. There was no mention of hiring bonuses.

Meanwhile, there are reportedly fears at the Sheriff’s Department that signing bonuses at other agencies could entice away even more deputies — like a widely publicized signing bonus of $75,000 from the Alameda Police Department for new recruits or lateral hires from other police departments.

UPDATED 2/14/2024: The story was updated with additional information from a jail spokesperson who said that jail leadership last October began organizing the Spanish-language programming that was recently announced.

Sylvie Sturm reported this story while participating in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 Data Fellowship, which provided training, mentoring and funding to support this project.

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The Senate Appropriations Committee did not call Senate Bill 662 for a vote before a procedural deadline last Friday, effectively killing it. Introduced by Sen. Susan Rubio, Democrat of Baldwin Park, the bill would have lifted the state’s ban on electronic recording in civil family, juvenile justice and dependency cases, making it an option when court reporters were unavailable.

The judiciary is statutorily required to provide reporters in felony criminal, juvenile justice and dependency cases. But Rubio hoped her bill would address the long-standing shortage in family courts, where officials have struggled to find enough staff to cover proceedings, despite recruitment efforts and bonus pay. In addition to expanding electronic recording, the bill would have changed California’s stringent certification requirements that limit the applicant pool.

“This is an important issue for me as a survivor of domestic violence, as an advocate for victims and as an advocate of working families,” Rubio wrote in an email, adding that she would continue to talk with unions and professional associations. 

“My goal is that by working side by side we can address the workforce shortages,” she wrote, “while at the same time ensuring victims navigating our court system do not become another statistic.”

For four decades, unions have opposed most attempts by the Legislature to expand the use of recording technology, and this time was no different.

In a Jan. 4 letter to Rubio, the Court Reporters Board of California, which oversees licensing, wrote that “real time reporters were the most dependable,” and that “offering an inferior record to litigants is unacceptable, and measures must be taken to ensure a verbatim record produced by a neutral professional for all litigants.”

In 2021, the Legislature authorized an annual grant of $30 million to increase the number of certified reporters in family and civil cases. Yet the number of professionals retiring or resigning continues to outpace new hires, according to a Judicial Council of California report.

Despite offering incentives, including a $30,000 signing bonus, the San Francisco County Superior Court as of this month had 15 vacancies and was unable to hire any court reporters last year, said Court Executive Officer Brandon Riley.

David W. Slayton, executive director of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the largest trial court in the nation, said this week that the incentives won’t “make a dent in our 100 plus court reporter vacancy rate.” Since last February his jurisdiction has seen a net loss of seven court reporters, he said.

“The well documented court reporter shortage in California, coupled with statutory restrictions on electronic recording, amounts to an undeniable constitutional crisis, with over 330,000 hearings taking place in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in 2023 alone with no verbatim record of what transpired,” Slayton wrote in an email. “This leaves vulnerable litigants in family law, probate and unlimited civil cases, many of whom are self-represented, without a clear understanding of what happened in their proceedings and no ability to meaningfully appeal.”

Anne-Christine Massullo, San Francisco Superior Court’s presiding judge, endorsed SB 662. In a statement the day before its scheduled hearing, she emphasized economic fairness.

“It is essential to find a remedy to close this chasm of injustice that fails litigants who cannot afford to hire their own CSR,” she wrote, referring to certified shorthand reporters, “while favoring others with the financial means to pay a court reporter to take a verbatim record of their day in court.”

Rubio’s bill was co-sponsored by the Family Violence Appellate Project and the Legal Aid Association of California.

The post Electronic Recording in Family Courts Fails to Advance in California Legislature appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

To her surprise, the judge said no one was available to produce a transcript. Her choices were to proceed to trial, postpone by one day with no guarantee of a certified court reporter, or hire one privately. The third option was out of the question, since the service can cost up to $3,000 daily.

The next day, the woman — a Nigerian immigrant single mother who said she did not want her name used because she feared for her safety, so we are calling her Simone — showed up again. Once more, no court reporter. 

Simone then realized she might not get what she was after: giving her husband only strictly supervised visits to their children. Her lawyers suggested that it might be better to settle with him.

Advocates for women’s and children’s rights say providing free or low-cost access to transcripts in hearings is key to equal justice. Unlike many states, California has in recent years repeatedly failed to guarantee adequate documentations of court proceedings, putting victims of domestic violence at a distinct legal disadvantage. In a state where many litigants attempt to represent themselves because they cannot afford to hire an attorney, lacking an official record creates a significant additional barrier.

Despite failing for years to make transcripts standard practice in California family courts, the Legislature may be headed for a breakthrough. State Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from Baldwin Park, made incremental progress toward that goal in February with her bill, Universal Access to Court Records, which would allow recording in Superior Court hearings when certified court reporters are unavailable.

The legislation made it through the Senate Judicial and Business, Professions and Economic committees, but hit a roadblock in the Appropriations Committee, whose members asked Rubio for revisions. That kicked it into 2024 for further consideration.

Regardless of the delay, Rubio has not exactly been idle on domestic abuse issues. On Oct. 13, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed another bill she championed, Piqui’s Law, which prioritizes child safety in family court and promotes the training of judicial staff on child abuse and domestic violence issues. The law also bans courts from ordering so-called reunification therapy programs, a controversial approach that forces children to attempt to reconcile with parents with whom they have become alienated. This was Rubio’s second attempt in as many years to introduce this legislation. 

But in many ways, solving the court reporter shortage would make a difference for a larger number of victims throughout the state.

“It’s such an important issue,” said Lorin Kline, director of advocacy at the Legal Aid Association of California, which co-sponsored Rubio’s court reporter bill. “Until we solve it, litigants will have their rights violated, with serious life consequences.”

Over the years, a number of California lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to fix the court transcript gap through legislation lifting the state’s ban on electronic recording in civil and family law hearings in which court reporters are unavailable. While the state judiciary is statutorily required to provide reporters in felony criminal, juvenile justice and dependency cases, that does not apply for civil, family, probate, misdemeanor criminal and traffic law.

[Related: Our 2022 series on coercive control and family abuse]

In 2013 and again in 2015, former Assembly member Donald P. Wagner, a Republican from Orange County, tried to expand electronic recording. In 2018, Assembly member Blanca Rubio, Democrat from Baldwin Park and Sen. Rubio’s sister, proposed allowing audio recording in civil courts. Her bill died in committee. 

Wagner said pushback from the unions representing court reporters thwarted their efforts. Court reporters said they feared their jobs would be replaced by the likes of Alexa and Siri.

But experts have long expressed concern about labor organizations hindering reforms. Two decades ago, Glenn S. Koppel, a professor at Western State College of Law, wrote in the San Diego Law Review that the reporters union “maintains a powerful lobby in the California legislature that has blocked numerous efforts to introduce electronic court recording technologies in general jurisdiction proceedings.” Little has changed since then.

Court reporters counter that some proposed changes to the system could degrade the quality of the official record and discourage new entrants into the profession.

Court reporters are stenographers trained to create verbatim records of hearings primarily using stenotype machines. They lay the foundation for challenging rulings when litigants claim their civil rights are violated. Their absence can doom an appeal.

“It is virtually impossible to challenge a trial court order with an appeal, without a record of what witnesses and judges said in court,” said Sen. Rubio as she introduced her legislation Senate Bill 662.

Transcripts can also be used to review judicial behavior, sometimes revealing that a judge is insufficiently familiar with domestic violence law.

“Court reporters are one of the strongest tools to keep judges true to the letter of the law,” said Eric Riviera-Jurado, a staff attorney with the Sacramento-based nonprofit WEAVE — When Everyone Acts, Violence Ends. “Not having them in court allows judges to ride roughshod over low-income litigants.”

In California, litigants like Simone who file a fee waiver are entitled to a pro bono court reporter and transcript. The failure to provide one is a violation of a 2018 state Supreme Court decision that entitles low-income parties in civil hearings and trials to pro bono court reporters if they ask in a timely manner. Failing to provide one and waive fees, the court held, “effectively deprives such litigants of equal access to the appellate process.”

Simone’s attorney, Kemi Mustapha of Bay Area Legal Aid, said her request for a fee waiver for Simone was timely — she had made it almost three months earlier. And hers was not an isolated case. Her colleague Jenna Gottlieb had unsuccessfully made about a dozen court reporter requests for her own domestic violence clients in the span of a few months. “Only three were provided, and six times I didn’t get a response from the court,” Gottlieb said, adding: “I felt my hands were tied behind my back.”

The introduction of Rubio’s bill comes after the state last year lifted a ban on novel techniques allowing transcription by voice rather than keyboard, and almost two years after it increased annual funding to county courts by $30 million for new hires. But that program has been hard to implement.

Tussle over transcription

The court reporter shortage has spiked since 2012, when more than half of the 58 trial courts in California eliminated court reporters as a budget-cutting measure.

Many states faced with similar shortfalls have introduced electronic recording of Superior Court hearings. Today, California is in the minority of states by disallowing recordings in family, civil and probate courtrooms, according to Sarah Reisman, directing attorney of advocacy and litigation at Community Legal Aid SoCal. 

But California also has the greatest demand for court reporter services in the nation, followed by two other large states that highly restrict recording, Texas and New York, said Jason Meadors, immediate past president of the National Court Reporters Association.

Meadors, who has been in the profession for 48 years, said court reporters, also known as certified shorthand reporters, are the gold standard. “There is no replacement for the human caretaker of the record,” he said. “If equipment fails, if there is a disruption to record making, whether by speakers or external factors, the stenographer, managing the record second-by-second, can take the steps needed to ensure an accurate record.”

Rubio said she was mindful that professionals might view her proposal as a job killer. But the bill stipulates that if a transcript from an electronic recording is requested, the court would first have to offer that work to a certified shorthand reporter. 

The text of her bill underscores that the lack of access to recording technology is especially hard on low-income people, communities of color, Native tribes, people with disabilities, those with limited English proficiency and victims of domestic violence or sexual assault.

Eighty percent of family law litigants in the state represent themselves in court, according to the Judicial Council of California. But that is often a mistake, as navigating a system designed for attorneys can be stressful and legally perilous for the uninitiated.

“The proceedings in family court can be incredibly complex and fact intensive,” Reisman said at a breakfast meeting organized last April by the Los Angeles County Superior Court to highlight the court reporter shortage. 

Changing standards, technology

For a domestic violence survivor fleeing an abusive relationship and seeking judicial remedies, obtaining a transcript could have a deeply personal impact, say women’s rights advocates. Without it, she could lose custody of her children, feel compelled to return to an abuser or even become homeless.

If enacted, Sen. Rubio’s bill will also loosen some of the stringent professional requirements that the California Reporters Association has long fought to protect. It is particularly difficult to get certified in California, according to a 2022 report prepared for the California Trial Court Consortium, an association of small judicial districts.

“Most states that mandate certification have only one exam required for licensure, but California has three,” the report said. “All three exams regularly yield low pass rates, but far more students fail dictation — the most specialized test — than pass. Moreover, the number of applicants attempting and passing the dictation exam has fallen in recent years.”

Rubio’s bill would allow people who pass the National Court Reporters examination to work in the field without passing California’s test. It would also allow judges to modify rulings relating to child custody or visitation when circumstances change. Without a transcript, it is nearly impossible to verify what the original circumstances were.

The state has taken another step to expand its court reporter pool. Last year, the Legislature lifted a ban on voice writing, in which reporters are trained to keep an accurate record by repeating the proceedings into a microphone and later preparing the verbatim transcripts. Federal and military courts have used them for years. 

Not all court reporter schools in California have introduced a curriculum specifically for voice writing, but there are several online courses, according to the National Verbatim Reporters Association’s president Rebecca Bazzle. She said it takes only six to 12 months to become a voice writer, as opposed to three to four years to become a certified shorthand reporter. It took her organization nearly a decade to persuade California to lift the voice writing ban. 

Custody of children

In previous years, Sen. Rubio has used her legislative position to move the policy needle on a number of domestic violence issues, including coercive control, a recently recognized category of abuse that does not necessarily involve physical abuse, but includes psychological or economic manipulation.

Asked why having new technologies in court reporting mattered so much to her, Rubio cited the case of a Latina mother who fought for custody of her three children in the Sacramento County Superior Court in 2012. The woman, identified as C.S. in court records, was denied custody, and lost her request for a permanent restraining order against her husband. The trial court found that she had not provided enough evidence of abuse in a hearing, and failed to establish that it would not be in the children’s best interest to give their father custody. The father had an attorney, but the mother represented herself.

No court reporter was provided at her trial. She was probably unaware that if she wanted an official record, she would have had to request a fee waiver, said Jennafer Wagner, director of programs at the Family Violence Appellate Project, which provides free representation to domestic violence survivors in California and Washington state. The organization is a co-sponsor of Sen. Rubio’s bill-in-progress.

Lacking a transcript, the Appellate Project constructed a “settled statement” — a written summary based on the recollections of the parties and witnesses — and convinced California’s third district appeals court to hear C.S’s case. But the three-justice panel was not persuaded to overturn the trial court’s decision. “I do believe if we had an actual transcript, the outcome of the appeal would have been different,” Wagner said. 

Sen. Rubio was not discouraged by the delay of her bill. In a recent interview, she said she would continue to fight for its passage because the lives of many women and children depended on it. “It just makes it a little more challenging,” she said.

The aftermath of domestic violence can leave women and their children experiencing a wide range of emotions, including fear, chronic pain and insomnia, research has shown. In some cases, it can be fatal, and physical, mental and behavioral health problems persist long after the conflict ends. Children who grow up witnessing violence at home can suffer a range of emotional disturbances.

“Family courts are the most important part of the judicial system, because its judicial officers hold children’s lives in their hands,” said domestic violence survivor Tina Swithin, who battled in the San Luis Obispo County courthouse for nearly 10 years, sometimes representing herself, before getting full custody of her two daughters, now 16 and 18. Swithin now runs One Mom’s Battle, a blog that has morphed into a worldwide movement with 225,000 followers.

Skilled labor shortage

Court stenographers are in high demand nationwide, but too few people are pursuing that career or graduating from training programs. Since 2012, the number of court reporters in the United States has dropped more than 20%. According to the Judicial Council, California employs about 1,200 full-time court reporters, but an additional 650 are needed.

Factors contributing to the nationwide shortage include reduced enrollment in training and the high rate of retirement, said the heads of California’s superior courts in a public letter last year, soon after Newsom signed the bill to allow voice writing.

California’s certified shorthand reporter shortage tops that of all other states, according to the National Court Reporters Association. Only eight training programs remain today, compared with 16 in 2011, wrote Michael Roddy, executive officer of the San Diego County Superior Court, in a January opinion piece in the San Diego Union Tribune. In 2021, 175 people took the licensing exam, and only 36 passed.

Two years ago, the Legislature budgeted $30 million annually for courts to offer financial incentives to expand their pool of court reporters. Los Angeles County’s share was $10 million in each of the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years. San Francisco’s was $706,000.

But few jurisdictions have shown much success, forcing some to take drastic measures. In October 2020, Santa Clara County Superior Court stopped assigning court reporters in family law cases, except in emergency restraining order hearings.

The effect of the shortage is so severe in Los Angeles County, home to the largest trial court in the nation, that in just the first two months of this year 52,000 hearings took place without a court reporter, including 14,052 family law hearings, said David Slayton, who became court executive officer there last December. In an email, Slayton said that if the situation persists, his court might not be able to provide reporters even in mandated cases.

Up until now, all family law litigants in domestic violence cases who requested fee waivers have been provided court reporters, he said. But he said that, less than ideally, “in some instances parties to domestic violence and restraining order hearings may opt to move forward with their cases without a court reporter” — a choice unlikely to result in desired outcomes.

Despite impressive financial incentives for workers and massive advertising, Slayton said he was able to hire eight court reporters since February, but eight retired in the same period, “resulting in a zero net gain.”

Brandon E. Riley, head official of the San Francisco County Superior Court, said his court was “pretty close to the edge of the cliff.” Despite three years of recruitment efforts, the court has only 26 reporters to fill 40 slots in its 52 courtrooms.

Since taking over in April, Riley said he had to juggle reporters among courtrooms to avoid turning away low-income domestic violence survivors. He said he hoped to expand the court reporter pool with a new daily fee of $1,000, and by increasing the retention offer — bonus pay to keep workers in their positions — to $30,000 over three years, up from the current $10,000. Among other creative solutions he is considering is hiring voice writers, like Santa Clara County Superior Court recently did.

Prohibitive costs 

Part of the challenge for recruiting and retaining court reporters nationwide is being able to pay wages competitive with the private sector. Court reporters nationally earn an average of $62,000, but command considerably more in private companies. San Francisco pays the highest court reporter salary in the state — $150,000 plus benefits. “If you get past the exam, it’s a lucrative career to work in a court,” Riley said.

Alaska has not used court reporters since achieving statehood in 1959, opting instead for audio recording. In Nevada, judges are given the option of having a stenographer or a recording, and most opt for the latter, said Mark Gibbons, who served as a trial court judge there and later in that state’s Supreme Court until his retirement in 2020.

Gibbons said that while electronic recording technology has improved, once in a while the equipment stops briefly. “Even two or three minutes of a gap could mean missing very important testimony,” that cannot reliably be re-created, he said. “When that happens, the appellate court will decide the case the best it can, unless the lawyers for all parties stipulate to what was testified to.” 

But Janet Harris, president of the American Association of Electronic Reporters and Transcribers, said that certified reporters are trained to ensure that such gaps are avoided because they are monitoring the equipment throughout the proceeding.

“In the event of a problem, the certified digital reporter is trained to immediately stop the proceeding so there is no loss of record,” she said. If audio gear is properly maintained and tested, she said, gaps can be avoided. 

“Electronic recording equipment has proven very reliable,” Los Angeles County’s Slayton said. “In fact, in 2022, over 500 appeals of matters in evictions, criminal cases and other limited jurisdiction matters were electronically recorded, reviewed and decided by our Appellate Division without incident.”

Still, any move to introduce recording in California’s 58 counties will likely continue to face opposition from unions. David Green, president of SEIU 721, which represents court reporters in Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, said in an interview last year that if the state “tries to replace shorthand reporters with digital devices, we will push back.” He declined to comment on Sen. Rubio’s latest attempt.

Women’s rights advocates are determined to get Rubio’s bill on the governor’s desk next year. They say domestic violence survivors need those transcripts to get justice.

“We are hopeful the Senate Appropriations Committee will recognize the urgency of this issue and its impact on low-income and self-represented litigants and act to pass SB 662 out of committee before their January 2024 deadline,” Slayton said.

In the meanwhile, legal aid lawyers continue to prepare their clients for finding no court reporter when they arrive in family court. 

Simone, the Nigerian mother, decided to take Mustapha’s advice and settle with her abusive ex-spouse. The judge awarded her a three-year restraining order and sole physical and legal custody of the children, all less than 10 years old.

She said she was disappointed that her ex was given unsupervised visitation rights. She had hoped for an outcome that would have given him only restricted contact with the kids. 

“A lot of women from Africa,” Simone said, “would hesitate to publicly speak up about the domestic violence they experienced, because of the stigma.”

But had a trial happened, she said, she would not have held back about the details of the abusive behavior that ripped her family apart.

This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 Domestic Violence Impact Fund.

CLARIFICATIONS AND CORRECTIONS, 12/20/2023: A previous version of this article mischaracterized attorney Kemi Mustapha’s advice to Simone. After publication, her employer, Bay Area Legal Aid, said that her advice to settle her case seeking a temporary restraining order came from her satisfaction with the terms of the agreement, not the lack of a court reporter. A representative of the organization further elaborated that Mustapha’s client was given sole physical and legal custody of the children, rather than “full custody” as the article previously stated. The story was also changed to correct the date the Santa Clara County Superior Court stopped assigning court reporters for restraining order cases, which was October 2020, not April 2022.

One Mom’s Battle is a blog that has morphed into a worldwide movement with 225,000 followers. An earlier version of this story understated the number of followers.

The first quote from Janet Harris, president of the American Association of Electronic Reporters and Transcribers, was updated to represent her views more clearly. Due to a misunderstanding, she was misquoted as saying that gaps in recordings are no more frequent than the occasional ones caused by stenographers nodding off while typing. 

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On Oct. 13, Maya, 16, and Sebastian Laing, 12, and their allies celebrated the passage of Senate Bill 331, aka Piqui’s Law, which prohibits California family court judges from forcing kids into so-called reunification camps and ensures that judges and those serving as expert witnesses undergo critical training on domestic violence and child custody.

The siblings had been embroiled in a custody dispute last year when they alleged that their mother was abusing them. Judge Rebecca Connelly, who oversaw their custody case, didn’t believe the siblings’ claims, so in October 2022, she ordered them into a reunification therapy program in Los Angeles. The program is part of a lucrative, unregulated industry designed to make kids recant allegations of parental abuse while yielding operators from $14,000 to $40,000 for four days of training.

Several children who have attended have said the experience left them traumatized.

Maya and Sebastian did not cooperate when transport agents arrived at their grandmother’s home to take them away on Oct. 20, 2022, so they were physically picked up and forced into a car, which Maya said caused her to suffer cuts and abrasions. They were then taken to Los Angeles to spend four days in the program, according to videos that the siblings posted in May after running away from their mother’s home and going into hiding.

Since July, Maya and Sebastian have been allowed to live with their father, but Connelly still maintains that their allegations of abuse describe events that never happened, according to a short documentary by Insider News released last week.

Meanwhile, family court judges are still ordering children into reunification camps across the U.S. and Canada. However, several states are considering legislation similar to Piqui’s Law to comply with a provision in the federal Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022. The act promises states up to $25 million in grants if their reforms comply with national requirements.

The post Children Violently Removed by Court Order Celebrate New California Bill Prohibiting Practice appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has frequently compared the sale of fentanyl to murder — most recently saying “the sale of fentanyl is equivalent to handing someone a loaded gun” during an Oct. 1 San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing.

As such, she has criticized and diminished the use of diversion programs that offer criminal defendants accused of selling drugs rehabilitation, counseling and training rather than jail sentences. Since taking office 15 months ago, Jenkins has reduced the number of referrals to the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project by 70%, according to its CEO David Mauroff.

And as San Francisco’s rate of overdose fatalities reaches more than two deaths a day, Jenkins is pushing for defendants accused of selling drugs to remain in jail. But some legal advocates say that’s a bad strategy both for the defendants and for public safety.

“Who’s deciding our strategies and our next steps around all these people that are in jail?” Mauroff said. “They’re going to be released, you can’t hold them forever. So, what’s the plan for when they’re released?”

In Episode 4 of the podcast series, “The War on Drugs Revisited: San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis,” we take a historical look at the justice system’s approach to drugs, its racial inequities, what has changed over the years, and which older policies may be making a comeback. Read our previous coverage on this storyline.

Alexandra Pray, a San Francisco deputy public defender, said Jenkins’ heavy prosecutorial approach undermines the possibility of helping people develop skills to lead better lives without selling drugs.

“It’s maddening to have a district attorney’s office who says that their goal is to clean up the streets, but we have this proven way to actually make substantive changes and not just temporarily fix the problem, and the DAs office is willfully avoiding it,” Pray said.

The district attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, told a California State Assembly committee dedicated to overdose prevention last May that arresting low-level drug dealers could undermine public safety by taking resources away from fighting violent crime.

“People at the bottom, you can punish them all day, and they’ll just be immediately replaced,” he said. “If you prioritize doing that, if we super criminalized low-level drug crimes, we effectively decriminalize going after rape, arson, murder, because there’s only so much resource in the criminal justice system. So, that I think was the big mistake of the 80s and early 90s that I would hope we would not repeat.”

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A Pew Research study from 2018 revealed that more imprisonment doesn’t reduce a state’s drug problems. The data showed no relationship between prison terms and drug misuse. 

The study’s authors concluded: “The evidence strongly suggests that policymakers should pursue alternative strategies that research shows work better and cost less.”

The San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project was established as such an alternative strategy in 1976. The board and staff are composed of San Francisco residents, members of the San Francisco Bar Association, judges of the municipal courts, and a former client and current clinical social worker, Philip Jones. 

Jones, who said he was in and out of the criminal justice system from an early age, said it wasn’t until he was connected with the pretrial diversion program that he was able to turn his life around.

He said that his Latino-African American heritage influenced the way people in authority responded to his needs as a child.

“From a young age, I was told in school by teachers, by doctors that my behavior wasn’t normal,” Jones said. “I wasn’t able to sit in the classroom and go through eight hours of school every day without some kind of disturbance. I benefited more from physical play art, things that kind of excited a different dopamine response than just like normal completion of tasks or mathematics or science.”

Attempts to discipline Jones escalated from sending him to the principal’s office to after school detention to juvenile hall.

“That, in combination with exposure to trauma, some violence in the home, experimentation with substances, addiction, mental health, just kind of fueled my engagement with the criminal justice system,” he said. “I started to believe that I was this person that was destined to be incarcerated over and over again, this person that was incapable of holding a job, of getting higher education, and in this category where I felt really lost.”

For six years, he was routinely arrested for non-violent offences, at one point facing warrants every other month. Then, through the pretrial diversion program, he was assigned a case manager who helped him navigate social services, secure a long-term shelter bed, enter substance use treatment and anger management programs, and access mental health, where he found out about his bipolar disorder and learned about the importance of taking regular medication. The case manager’s office was open whenever Jones wanted to check in — it even had a cot in a secluded corner if he felt like taking a nap.

Jones said the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Program helped his life “pivot from a cycle of arrest, jail, court into a cycle of healing.” Today, Jones has a master’s degree in social work and works as a therapist in a middle school and a high school.

“I see myself in the kids I work with every day, and literally in the neighborhood that I grew up in,” he said. “I love when clients feel that they can be comfortable with me when they feel they can talk to me, and they feel that I really see them on a level maybe others haven’t in the past.”

The post DA’s Opposition to Drug Diversion Programs Undermines Public Safety, Say Legal Advocates appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

A drug crackdown in the Tenderloin and South of Market has resulted in more than 600 arrests, with authorities seizing more than 200 pounds of fentanyl since the initiative launched in May, Mayor London Breed told the Board of Supervisors during a public meeting on Sept 12. But not all board members were impressed.

The coordinated effort, involving city and state law enforcement agents, appears to be leading to violent clashes, said Supervisor Dean Preston, whose district includes the Tenderloin.

“They’re poking a hornet’s nest,” he said in an interview. “There are increased turf wars that are occurring because you have a raid here, and another group moves in. I mean, we’ve had gunfire and a murder during the middle of the day.” 

In Episode 3 of the podcast series, “Criminalizing Drug Use: San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis,” we take a look at the long, ignominious history and impact of drug criminalization in San Francisco and across the country. Read our previous coverage on this storyline.

Preston pointed to a report of a nonfatal shooting at Golden Gate Avenue and Leavenworth Street at 1 p.m. on July 18, and a fatal shooting at Golden Gate and Hyde Street at 6 p.m. on July 21. The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to questions regarding drug turf wars.

The police effort also seems to be making little headway in its reported goals of reducing street-level drug activity, enrolling people with substance use disorder into drug treatment and mitigating overdose deaths.

According to the chief medical examiner’s office September report, 84 people died of accidental overdose in August for a total of 563 deaths so far this year. If the current pace of fatalities persists, the city could surpass its highest recorded number of overdose deaths in a calendar year — 725 in 2020.

Meanwhile, people who openly sell drugs appear undeterred, said Alexandra Pray, an attorney for the Public Defender’s Office and a Tenderloin resident. She said she would rather see more patrols rather than arrests.

“I walk to work every day, and I walked through just groups of young men huddled around, and I know what they’re doing,” Pray said. “And I just don’t know where the police are. It feels like the police are allowing this to happen, and then when they feel like it, they swoop in and pick people up, and we’re not really solving the problem.”

Along with increased arrests of drug dealers, police have also been arresting people who use drugs under the new Intoxication Detention Pilot Program. The effort is meant to encourage people with substance use disorder to accept drug treatment. But the strategy has been ineffective so far, according to Police Chief Bill Scott. At a Sept. 3 Police Commission meeting, Scott said only two people arrested at that point had accepted treatment. When asked by Police Commissioner Max Carter-Oberston how long the “experiment” of arresting people for drug use would continue, Scott suggested it was the only option available.

“Until some other entity, other than the police department, deals with this issue, it really doesn’t leave us with much of a choice,” Scott said.

Carter-Oberston countered that the San Francisco Department of Public Health published a 2022 Overdose Prevention Plan with other ideas, but it is “just collecting dust.” 

 “I’ve read it,” Scott said. “It’s a nice report.”

Shannon Knox, director of the San Francisco Drug Users Union — an organization of drug users campaigning to de-stigmatize and improve the well-being of drug users — said it is no surprise that the police strategy has not worked. 

“By and large, drug users are scared of the cops because the cops put them in jail and they remove them from their community,” Knox said. “So, I don’t think that they’re a trusted presence for entering treatment.”

Street-level outreach workers are having more success. During her Sept. 12 discussion with supervisors, Breed said nine people who use drugs accepted treatment offered by outreach workers since the coordinated crackdown began.

The city and state’s stepped-up law enforcement has raised comparisons with the War on Drugs, which began in 1971 under the Nixon administration and ramped up under presidents Reagan and Clinton, until it became widely denounced as ineffective and unjust.

Critics say San Francisco’s law enforcement approach to drugs disproportionately targets communities of color. While Black people are 5% of the city’s population, they made up about one-third of arrests and a quarter of police stops in the first three months of this year, according to a police report. According to last year’s report, Black people were 25 times more likely than white people to be handled by force. And Black people make up 43% of the county jail population, according to recent data from the San Francisco Sheriff Department.

Update Sept. 19: This article was updated on Sept. 19 to reflect the latest preliminary data on accidental overdose deaths from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

This series is underwritten by a California Health Equity Fellowship grant from the Annenberg Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Interviewed in this episode:

• Kelly Knight, professor of medical anthropology, history and social medicine specializing in substance use, homelessness and harm reduction at UCSF, and associate director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative
• Sarah Evans, global director of harm reduction, Open Society Foundations
• Alexandra Pray, deputy public defender, San Francisco Public Defender’s Office
• David Mauroff, CEO, San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Program
• Matt Dorsey, supervisor, San Francisco Board of Supervisors
• Dean Preston, supervisor, San Francisco Board of Supervisors
• Shannon Knox, director, San Francisco Drug Users Union
• Sara Shortt, director of policy and community organizing, HomeRise
• Gary McCoy, vice president of policy and public affairs, HealthRight 360
• Laura Thomas, director of harm reduction policy, San Francisco AIDS Foundation

The post Drug Crackdown Has Sparked Violent Turf Warfare in Central San Francisco, Supervisor Says appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“This is just wildly inappropriate,” said Kirk Jenkins, senior counsel at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer. “You could cause violence against judges.” 

It is unclear when the two colorfully designed posters were pasted to the side of a building on Mission Street near 22nd, or who is behind the campaign. Each depicts a name in large bold red letters, the dates of their arrests, the amount of fentanyl that the designer of poster claims was in their possession at the time of arrest, and the names of judges who released them. 

[See also: SF ‘Failing’ on Housing as Overdose Solution, Health Expert Says]

On Friday, Richard Tamor, the attorney for one of the defendants, Nicol Palma, said he had been unaware of the posters. He called them “outrageous.” 

“She was released because she’s four months pregnant, and he didn’t want to put her in jail and have a kid in custody,” Tamor said. “To put her name on a poster as a poster child of a judge who — I guess their thinking is he’s lenient — is outrageous. I mean, it’s the most compassionate thing he could have done is let her out. So they really need to get their facts together.”

The Public Press is not naming the other defendant because we were unable to reach them or a representative for comment.

A group called Stop Crime SF has been highly critical of judges and recently announced a campaign to “grade” their performance. The founder, Frank Nota, said in an email that the group was not behind the billboards, “nor do we support them.”

“These posters don’t cut it, because the public does not receive a thorough review of the judge’s record,” Nota said. “Without additional study, one cannot evaluate these judges properly based on such limited information.” 

It makes people question the decisions that our judges make, and that in and of itself breeds a suspicion of the law and judicial decisions.

Vidhya Prabhakaran, Bar Association of San Francisco

Another local group called TogetherSF Action launched a similar-looking but less personal campaign in May aimed at shaming city officials over the scourge of fentanyl-related deaths. One of the group’s backers is Michael Moritz, who owns the San Francisco Standard, the newsroom that broke the story about the posters naming and blaming judges for releasing defendants.

TogetherSF’s colorful broadsides pasted on buildings in the Tenderloin carried the motto “That’s Fentalife!” along with sarcastic messages, like a reminder to pick up Narcan, an opioid reversal medicine, on your next shopping trip.

Kanishka Cheng, TogetherSF’s co-founder and executive director, said in media interviews that the campaign was a tongue-in-cheek way to spur city officials into addressing the overdose crisis. Housing and addiction health advocates criticized the posters as insensitive.

In an emailed response to a request for comment, Cheng said TogetherSF was not involved with the poster campaign targeting judges.

In a statement, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office called the tactic “a cowardly act by under-informed people attempting to be legal vigilantes.” 

“Public defenders encounter a lot of assumptions and demonization of the people we represent,” the statement said. “We push back against those notions in court and in the news when prompted because they are human beings with complex lives and unique circumstances, especially when it comes to the exploitative drug trade.”

David Faigman, chancellor and dean of the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, said calling out judges by name risks undermining their crucial role. 

“Judges need to be able to articulate how they are exercising leadership to get us to a solution,” Faigman said. 

The posters come in the wake of several statements made by prominent elected officials blaming judges for grim street conditions.

“Judges are refusing to make sure that these individuals stay in custody, and that has to change,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said on ABC7 on July 12. At an Aug. 3 town hall meeting to discuss safety in the Tenderloin, Jenkins said judges were “ignoring the dangerousness of this conduct.”

On Aug. 23, Mayor London Breed joined a protest outside the federal courthouse to denounce an injunction upheld by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that banned city officials from clearing the tents and belongings of unhoused people. 

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle on Aug. 29, Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized judges for interfering with local policies on homelessness.

“Damn it, they need to be accountable as well,” Newsom said. “These judges are wrong on these overriding sweeping orders.”

Bobbie Stein, a San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project board member and criminal defense attorney, said such comments from public officials are partly responsible for the posters.

“I’m not saying that Brooke Jenkins or London Breed and certainly not Gavin Newsom are telling people to do this kind of thing, but I think it’s fueled by their rhetoric,” Stein said.

She said the “lock them up” narrative “fans the flames of fear” while drawing attention away from research-based solutions for public safety.

“There is growing evidence that increases in incarceration, particularly for drug and other nonviolent crimes, have led to a misallocation of scarce prison resources, and likely undermine families and communities,” Stein said.

The offices of the district attorney, mayor and governor did not respond to requests for comment.

Stein said that although it is not unheard of for campaigns to target judges over perceived lenient sentences, “this is particularly egregious because these aren’t even people that have been convicted of crimes.”

Vidhya Prabhakaran, board chair of the Bar Association of San Francisco, said that since judges are prohibited from commenting on individual cases, the posters were “scapegoating judges who are not in a position to defend themselves.” He added that such actions also undermine the judiciary as a whole. 

“It makes people question the decisions that our judges make, and that in and of itself breeds a suspicion of the law and judicial decisions, which is counterproductive to a functioning democracy,” Prabhakaran said.

He said he hopes the campaign backfires and leads people to support and defend the judiciary. “I suspect that’s what will ultimately come out of this.”

Update, Sept. 10: The poster campaign in the Mission quickly morphed into a public art political feud, with some torn off, and others tagged “Jail the Sacklers,” in reference to the family that owns the pharmaceutical company fined billions of dollars for poorly controlled wide distribution of opioids.

Update, Sept. 21: This story was changed to include a response for a request for comment from TogetherSF CEO Kanishka Cheng.

The post Anonymous Posters Singling Out Judges for Leniency in Drug Cases Earn Condemnation From Defense Lawyers appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.