Pubdate: Sat, 01 Nov 2014
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Paige St. John

GROUND ZERO FOR PENAL REFORM

Foundations' Push for California Prop. 47 to Reduce Drug-Use 
Penalties Is Aimed at National Change.

SACRAMENTO - The statewide initiative on Tuesday's ballot to reduce 
penalties for illicit drug use and petty theft is part of a 
multimillion-dollar campaign to revise sentencing laws in California 
and across the nation.

Five major foundations, headlined by a philanthropic group run by New 
York billionaire George Soros, have poured millions of dollars to 
push for changes in California's policies on crime and imprisonment. 
The campaign is aimed at shaping public opinion, media coverage, 
research and grassroots activism on the issue.

Proposition 47 would reclassify possession of heroin, methamphetamine 
and other illegal drugs, and theft of $950 or less, as misdemeanors 
in California. If the measure passes, California will become the 
first state to "de-felonize" all drug use, opening the door for 
similar efforts in other states.

"We hope we're setting a precedent for the nation," said Lynne Lyman, 
state director of the National Drug Policy Alliance, an active 
supporter of Proposition 47. "We are hoping it will signal that we 
don't need to be so tough on crime all the time."

Proponents of the ballot measure have raised $9 million - at least $2 
million of which came from two of the foundations - for their 
campaign thus far. Opponents have raised just $526,000, state 
election records show.

That direct support, used for television advertising, gathering 
petition signatures and other campaign expenses, is dwarfed by the 
same foundations' larger funding of nonprofit advocacy, The Times 
found through interviews and federal tax records and internal documents.

Since 2011, the foundations have awarded at least $14 million in 
grants to almost three dozen California-based groups that are 
earmarked for "criminal justice reform" or to influence public 
opinion. Soros' Open Society Foundations in 2012 also gave a 
$50-million grant to the National Drug Policy Alliance to "advance 
drug policy reform" in states across the nation.

The coordination by a few wealthy foundations to change public policy 
represents a legitimate but worrying form of political influence, 
said Robert McGuire, who tracks such activity for the Center for 
Responsive Politics. The foundation grants are not disclosed publicly 
in the same way campaign contributions are reported. Foundation 
nonprofit tax filings often do not become public until two years 
after money is spent.

"Nonprofits are allowed to do this, but voters have a right to know 
what interest is trying to get them to vote a certain way," McGuire said.

The California effort was initiated by Tim Silard, who ran 
alternative sentencing programs for California Atty. Gen. Kamala 
Harris when she was San Francisco district attorney, and Dan Zingale, 
who was chief of staff to then-first lady Maria Shriver.

Silard had taken over the Rosenberg Foundation, a Bay Area 
philanthropy known for seed grants to social justice projects, such 
as jobs for felons. Zingale is in charge of a new advocacy push by 
the $3-billion California Endowment, created to promote better 
health, to fund "change-making" activism, starting with federal 
health insurance, immigration laws and now criminal policy.

Silard and Zingale said they sought a strategy that could break the 
grip of "tough on crime" politics in California.

In 1994, California voters overwhelmingly passed one of the nation's 
first and toughest "three strikes" laws, mandating 25-to-life 
sentences for three-time felons. At the time, the violent crime rate 
was at an all-time high, and the memory of the 1992 Los Angeles riots 
and abduction and murder of 12year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma by a 
lifelong felon were still fresh in voters' minds.

Coalition members say they are driven by a belief that California - 
and the rest of the nation - locks up too many people for too long 
and that public safety would be better served by putting resources 
toward job training, mental health and drug addiction treatment. An 
opening to change that trend surfaced in the U.S. Supreme Court's 
2011 ruling that conditions in California's overcrowded prisons were 
unconstitutionally dangerous, upholding a lower-court order to reduce 
the prison population.

A $25-billion state budget shortfall derailed plans to build more 
prisons. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's remedy - to divert a quarter 
of the state's felon population to county jails - provided what 
Silard called the "perfect storm" to bring about change.

By early 2012, a four-year, $16-million campaign to change California 
criminal policy was launched.

The California Endowment, the Rosenberg Foundation and Soros' Open 
Society Foundations were joined by the Ford Foundation and Atlantic 
Philanthropies, which is backed by Chuck Feeney, a founder of Duty 
Free Shoppers Ltd.

With more than $3.7 billion in assets and a record of financing drug 
legalization efforts around the world, Soros' foundations were the 
biggest player. A Soros representative was put on the three-person 
board steering the "campaign," according to a campaign official.

The coalition created an organization called Californians for Safety 
& Justice to coordinate the campaign. The organization operates under 
the umbrella of a San Francisco-based nonprofit clearinghouse, which 
effectively shields its donor list and financial operations from public view.

The organization's initial strategy was to lobby counties overwhelmed 
by an influx of convicted felons to local jails under the governor's 
new prison policy. The group urged the local governments to shun jail 
construction and instead divert the felons to monitored release and 
rehabilitation programs.

The coalition hoped to use this as a springboard to bring about 
"systemic criminal justice reform in California," especially 
sentencing reform, according to internal foundation records.

The foundations used grants to assemble a network of community 
groups, state organizations and think tanks to join the Californians 
for Safety and Justice campaign to change state criminal justice policy.

Funding went to student groups at UC Berkeley, to inner-city church 
ministries and to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. An emphasis 
was placed on advocacy groups that work in low-income communities: 
Some $800,000 was awarded to the National Council of La Raza and to 
South L.A.'s Community Coalition to organize and advocate for changes 
to the criminal justice system.

In 2013, Soros provided money to create a new organization called 
Vote Safe to launch Proposition 47. Soros, a hedge fund manager 
widely known for bankrolling progressive campaigns and a decade-long 
battle against the war on drugs, has a representative on Vote Safe's 
three-member advisory board. The campaign manager for both Citizens 
for Safety and Justice and Vote Safe is Lenore Anderson, another 
former aide to Kamala Harris who once ran the public safety offices 
in San Francisco and Oakland. Anderson said the ballot initiative was 
encouraged by polls that showed a softening in public attitudes 
toward criminal punishment.

"The whole country right now is going through transformation in 
attitudes on criminal justice," she said. "We felt it was a big moment."

Violent crime in California had dropped precipitously, hitting a 
45-year low in 2011.

In the fall of 2012, California voters passed another Soros-backed 
initiative to lift three-strikes penalties for nonviolent felons.

The Ford Foundation has made criminal-justice issues a priority in 
recent years. In 2012, it provided a $1-million, two-year grant to 
the Los Angeles Times to increase news coverage of criminal justice, 
immigration and the Southwest border. The grant was later extended 
for an additional year, and part of the grant money has helped fund 
reporting by the author of this article.

The Times said that under the terms of the grant, it has sole control 
over coverage.

The Ford Foundation also provided a grant to an independent nonprofit 
group, the California Budget Project, for a fiscal analysis that 
would "advance reform of California's correctional system," according 
to Ford Foundation records. The California Endowment provided a grant 
to the nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice to produce 
policy briefs on the financial impacts of Proposition 47.

Citizens for Safety and Justice also was directed by the California 
Endowment to try to place articles in newspapers, including 10 to 15 
editorials and five news stories "on the need for deeper justice 
reforms," according to grant records provided by the California Endowment.

The California Endowment also spent $620,000 on a communications 
campaign that emphasized injustice in minority communities. The 
effort included a social media campaign that pitted state funding for 
prisons against funding for schools, according to reports released by 
the endowment.

Supporters of Proposition 47 also emphasize that drug laws have a 
disparate impact on Latino and African American communities.

Lyman of the Drug Policy Alliance hammered on that point during a 
Proposition 47 rally at a Los Angeles church a week ago.

"The war on drugs and mass incarceration is just an extension of 
slavery," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom