Understanding the Drug War in Oakland
California Coalition for Women Prisoners raises public consciousness about the inhumane conditions under which women in prison live and advocates for positive changes. They are currently looking at the effects of the Drug War on communities of color in Oakland and developing strategies to promote harm reduction and to counter police repression. To provide them with a fuller context and overview, we created a fact sheet. It contains statistics on drug arrests and deaths, identifies city council members who may be potential allies or opponents, and reviews local drug laws and policies.

Close Tallulah Juvenile Detention Facility
We provided data to the Juvenile Justice Project, a coalition of youth and criminal justice organizations in the South who are trying to close the Tallulah detention facility in Louisiana, which is infamous for its mistreatment of youth. The coalition is also advocating using some of the millions of dollars that would be saved toward community redevelopment. To support the coalition's redevelopment strategy, we researched several economic indicators, such as poverty and unemployment rates, in the community in which Tallulah is located.

Mapping Homeland Security
CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities is a poor/low-income Asian immigrant community organization in New York City. As part of its ongoing efforts to fight dangerous policies that target immigrant communities and other communities of color, CAAAV participates in Racial Justice 911, a national network of racial justice organizations that seeks to counter U.S. war abroad and at home. To support CAAAV's and RJ 911's strategic work in a time of government restructuring and increased immigrant surveillance, we researched the new Homeland Security Department and provided information about its budget, structure, authority, and relationship to different government agencies, especially the Department of Justice.

UN Rule 53 to Protect Women Prisoners in California from Harassment
Rule 53 is a provision of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners that bars male prison guards from guarding female prisoners. California Prison Focus has been trying to get an unresponsive California Department of Corrections to institute Rule 53. The group is shifting their strategy to instead build a grassroots campaign around the issue by helping provide a forum for victims of guard sexual harassment to tell their stories. To help CPF move forward, we provided tips on campaign strategy, tactics, and research leads. Following up on the consultation, we researched all major employment discrimination statutes on federal and state levels, including state regulations and rules regarding cross-sex prison employment and anti-discrimination decrees, and provided information on relevant court cases. We also found some exceptions to anti-discrimination laws related to sexual harassment and assault, which CPF may be able to use.

It's Your Right to Know: A Research Guide on Juvenile Justice in California
Now online! Use it to quickly find criminal justice information, including juvenile justice information and statistics. Research topics include police misconduct and funding, prison expansion, incarceration demographics, criminal justice budgets, campaign contributions. A joint project of the DataCenter and Books not Bars. Use web version or download PDF (333K).

Investigating Law Enforcement at Critical Resistance South
In April, the DataCenter held a workshop at the Critical Resistance South Regional Conference and Strategy Session in New Orleans. Community organizations and individuals from across the South came together to fight our country's reliance on prisons, police, and surveillance as an answer to social, political, and economic problems. Our workshop "Investigating Law Enforcement: How to Get Facts and Statistics Out of the System" focused on how to get statistics and background information on city police departments, county jails, state prisons, and state youth authorities. We co-facilitated with Paulina Hernandez Gómez from the Highlander Center, who discussed Highlander's "Schools Not Jails" campaign and the research methods they used. We showed forty activists how to get criminal justice information from public records and online sources, and we distributed resource packets. At the conference, we also participated in the Research Caucus to connect with other researchers in the movement.

Supporting Re-Entry of Former Prisoners
The MultiCultural Collaborative in Los Angeles was created after the Rodney King riots by multi-ethnic community-based service and advocacy organizations. They advocate for and support coalitions that address systemic policies and practices that exacerbate racial conflict. The MCC wants to increase public awareness of organizations in Los Angeles that work on re-entry of former prisoners, with the goal of increasing support for inmates and parolees, which will ultimately decrease recidivism. We are providing research to help MCC better understand the re-entry issues in LA, including the ratio of parolees to parole officers, the recidivism rate, the number of re-entry programs offered in LA and how many people are served by them compared to how many people are released. We are also researching the financial impacts, including the cost to house inmates, the state and county budget for re-entry programs, and the actual cost of re-entry programs.

New Research Guide for Youth Organizing for Criminal Justice Reform
Books not Bars is trying to stop mass youth incarceration and reverse the current fiscal trade-off between education and incarceration. It has been fighting the building of a super jail for youth in Alameda County, and recently began touring California schools, colleges, and community centers to expose California's atrocious youth incarceration record and to promote alternatives. During the tour, they want to distribute resources to help students support local criminal and juvenile justice organizing. As one of these resources, they asked us to create a research guide for youth activists on criminal and juvenile justice research sources. The guide is organized by research topic and contains listings of California government agencies on the state, county, and municipal level that have information on everything from juvenile arrest rates to information about civilian police review boards. The guide covers investigating the police, prison expansion, criminal justice demographics, criminal justice funding, tips on filing public records requests, and a glossary of government agencies and departments. Check our website in the near future for an electronic copy of the guide!

Anti-Loitering Law Passed in Oakland
Oakland City Council approved an Anti-Loitering Ordinance in February 2003, despite vocal opposition from community groups, including People United for a Better Oakland. The ordinance allows police officers to issue citations to people who they believe to be loitering for the purpose of engaging in drug dealing. PUEBLO believes that this ordinance will give police officers too much discretion in deciding whether a person is lawfully, or unlawfully, loitering on the street, with the result of criminalizing the young and the poor and violating civil rights. This also comes at a time when the Oakland Police Department has been embroiled in recent scandal of planting evidence and beating suspects. PUEBLO also makes the point that access to better education and job opportunities is a much more effective deterrent to drug dealing than paying a fine. To help PUEBLO oppose the ordinance, we provided a short history of anti-loitering laws and information showing that there is no proof that they are effective in lowering crime rates. We found that anti-loitering laws are consistently struck done as unconstitutional and that they are rooted in racist social policy.

Advocating for No Money for New Prisons
As part of their ongoing work to educate the public about the overspending in California on corrections, the Prison Activist Resource Center is gathering information on public attitudes around prison construction issues. As one way to gauge public attitudes, we did a review of prison construction or expansion bond initiatives since the 1980s that people in California voted on. We provided the title, whether or not it passed, and the amount for each initiative. We also summarized the legislative politics related to prison expansion in the 1990s. PARC used this information to put together an information packet on state budget spending. PARC said that the information was very helpful in providing salient speaking points around the need to reduce corrections spending, particularly at this time when we are faced with extensive cuts in education and social services.

Criminal Justice

Our Criminal Justice program provides strategic information and research training to prison activists, policy advocates and community organizers, enabling groups to mount effective campaigns, run efficient organizations and encourage public debate.

Strategic information is vital in the struggle to stop U.S. dependence on incarceration and criminalization of whole segments of society. We have become a recognized leader and expert in the strategic information field, evidenced by our participation in major criminal justice initiatives like Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex, and our articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle and ColorLines Magazine. We have trained prison activists in research-for-action, provided information and analysis for campaign strategizing, monitored news coverage of prison and police brutality issues, and participated in the development of coalitions dedicated to halting the enormous growth of the prison industrial complex in the U.S.