News & Commentary

By Will Matthews, ACLU of Northern California & Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project A recent study from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) demonstrates that decriminalization of marijuana can actually improve our children’s futures while saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

LA WEEKLY: Director Duncan Roy casts a courtly image of a baronial figure as he sits in his home atop Las Flores Canyon, a modernist, Bohemian hideaway with a jaw-dropping view of the Pacific. His surroundings project an image of California's creative lifestyle at its most alluring. But in February, Roy found himself standing alone outside Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail, released after three months of harrowing and wrongful incarceration.

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With an eye towards ending punitive drug policies that have made the United States the world’s largest incarcerator and cost taxpayers billions of dollars a year, Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) on Friday introduced legislation to reduce the penalty for Californians who possess small amounts of drugs for their own personal use. The bill, SB 1506, co-sponsored by the ACLU of California, Drug Policy Alliance, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the California NAACP, changes the penalty for the simple possession of drugs under state law from a felony, which is punishable by up to three years behind bars, to a misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to one year behind bars. The reform would help alleviate overcrowding in state prisons and county jails and save the state millions of dollars annually.