Month: September 2011

Don’t call it a prison release – or a panacea

By Heather Gilligan

California’s prison realignment is a confusing process, but state officials want to make one thing clear. While the prison population is being reduced starting next week, California isn’t actually releasing any prisoners early. Instead, they are shifting responsibility for “low level offenders” to the counties, which have historically had responsibility for this type of inmate. But that doesn’t mean that prison realignment has solved California’s criminal justice problems. “In the old days,” one expert says, “we used to call this ‘put the money on the stump and run.’”

Services for aging need better coordination, experts say

By Matt Perry

Aging Californians depend on a wide range of connected services – health, housing, transportation and access for the disabled – that must be better coordinated to maximize the quality of their care, according to a panel of experts at a Tuesday conference on long term services and supports.

DAs ponder and prepare for long-term effects of prison realignment

By Callie Shanafelt

The effects of prison realignment will remain unclear until after – perhaps months after –prison reform starts next week. Two district attorneys from very different California counties consider how AB 109 might affect them, and expert David Ball worries that no one really understands the implications of the complicated law.

Homeless for Years, Older Women in Los Angeles Find a Good Home

By Jessica Portner

On Skid Row, the downtown hub of the homeless population in Los Angeles, transients ask passersby for change, slump against concrete buildings, and mumble obscenities at bus stops. The Downtown Women’s Center’s beautiful new building, sitting in the middle of the mayhem, is a standout. The DWC’s Day Center serves hundreds of homeless women in its facilities every day and 71 lucky ones live in permanent residences, or efficiency apartments.

Care Innovations: The Future of Aging?

By Matt Perry

The brainchild of two well-funded corporate giants, a new Sacramento-area company hopes to change the future of aging by using technology to help senior citizens age gracefully – and safely – at home.

Uninsured in the Central Valley eager for health care reform

By Tim Moran

The Bridge to Reform is a $10 billion program that will transition low-income residents in California to a Medicare-like health coverage before the 2014 federal health care coverage mandate kicks in. That funding could bring much-needed changes, like providing patients with a medical home where they can get preventative care and where their medical histories are kept on file. But cash-strapped counties are worried – will the costs of extending coverage overrun their available funds, even with help from federal dollars?

After realignment, fewer women expected in prison

By Heather Gilligan

Half of women in California prisons are there for non-violent crimes – the kind of offenses that will be managed on the county level after prison realignment starts Oct. 1. Women’s needs are different from men’s and so are the reasons behind their brushes with the law. San Francisco County is already developing help tailored to women who commit crimes. Should other counties follow their lead?

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