Gov. Jerry Brown is on the verge of pouring at least half a billion dollars into our broken criminal justice system to expand jail capacity instead of embracing alternatives that have been proven to reduce prison overcrowding, improve community safety and save taxpayer dollars.

The ACLU of California issued the following statement in response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s speech today regarding major criminal law reforms.

LOS ANGELES – Federal Judge Terry J. Hatter today issued a landmark permanent injunction requiring the government to give automatic bond hearings as soon as immigrant detainees have been held for six months to determine if they should continue being detained.

California spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on felony drug possession convictions. Currently, possessing certain drugs for personal use is an automatic felony – no matter the amount or the circumstances.

ACLU of California asks, “How would you change the system?” California’s budget negotiations are an exercise in high stakes tradeoffs.  And as legislators finalize deep cuts to education and the safety net, the ACLU is challenging Californians to acquire a real-time sense of how the state’s bottom line would fare if prisons and jails were placed at the center of the chopping block. 

SAN FRANCISCO GATE: By Nanette Asimov Students say the bathrooms at Oakland High are messed up because they lack supplies, leak, or are always locked. At Far West High in the same city, students complain of classrooms so crowded that they have to sit on tables.