San Francisco votes to expand its jails tomorrow
Tomorrow, the three members on the Budget and Finance Committee of the SF Board of Supervisors will meet to discuss, among other things, funding a large new jail within San Francisco city limits (at 6th and Bryant streets).
If you wish to voice your disapproval of this project, you may attend the public Budget and Finance meeting at City Hall Legislative Chamber Room 250 at 10:30am.
You may also chose to write any of the three supervisors on the Committee. They are John Avalos ([email protected]), Mark Farrell ([email protected]), and Eric Mar ([email protected]). Here is a sample letter I just wrote! Steal it or modify it or write your own! (Next time I will post with more warning I promise.)
I will only be able to attend a small portion of the Budget and Finance meeting tomorrow, but I wanted to make sure I wrote to express my strong disapproval of the plan to build a new jail within San Francisco city limits.
Prison realignment throughout California, combined with draconian sentencing guidelines and wrong-headed bail policy, has put tremendous pressure on county jails across the state. Currently, nearly 75% of the people in San Francisco's jail are *awaiting trial*: many of these people have been locked up for months and even years. I draw from a recent CURB publication: "Common sense bail reform could keep these people in the community and reduce jail populations and costs."
I realize that San Francisco is in a bind here: the prisons are overflowing and a federal court order has mandated that overcrowding be curbed by the end of the year. Meanwhile, sentencing guidelines and bail policy are often set at a state and federal level. Not everything is up to the S.F. Board of Supervisors!
But we San Franciscans are being asked to foot an enormous bill for these misguided, mercenary, and ultimately unethical statewide policies. We should not have to pay for this. We should not support this jail expansion anyways: we would be far better served by investing our money in our poorest communities, NOT by jailing those communities. San Francisco can and should take symbolic and practical steps to resist the epidemic of incarceration in our state.
Supervisor Avalos, you have the purse strings. *Withhold them!*
Please vote NO on the grant funding the proposed jail expansion tomorrow.