40 yrs of Chicano Studies

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Old 10-07-2009, 01:53 PM
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A big part of the reason for the crowded conditions in prison is the dismal fact that two-thirds of California parolees end up back behind bars within three years. The causes for that record are complex, but a key factor is that many inmates lack education and job skills and struggle with addictions or mental health ills.
Perhaps some of the reason is that society continues to punish the convicted long after sentence has been served, and few want to hire a convict. Making an honest living is therefore difficult for the sincere and repentant.

As well, there is often an attitude or presence carried out of prison which applies to criminal or prison society and does not mesh with the rules of civil society.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Old 10-07-2009, 02:51 PM
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DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND REHABILITATION

INFORMATION ON POPULATION AND INMATE CHARACTERISTICS

AUGUST 15, 2006


• We currently have over 172,000 inmates as of August 9, 2006. Of
these, over 160,000 are males and almost 12,000 are females housed
in 33 institutions, 40 camps, and 12 community correctional centers
throughout the state.

• According to a recently released report by the Public Policy Institute
of California, our prison population is aging, with inmates under the
age of 25 representing a steadily declining share while the number of
prisoners in older age groups continues to grow.

• This most likely has a correlation with the fact that prisoners serving
time for violent crimes are now a majority of our population, and that
share is growing. In contrast, drug offenders are representing a
smaller share of the prison population and now comprises
approximately 20 percent of the prison population.

• Our male population is comprised of
38% Latino,
29% African American,
27% White,
6% Other.

Females are comprised of
39% White,
29% African American
28% Latina
5% Other.

• After California’s incarceration rate per 100,000 persons peaked in
1998 at 673, our rate has declined over the last eight years to its
current rate of 616. At the same time, the incarceration rate in the rest
of the United States has continued to increase slightly. Today,
California’s ranks 17th among all states for incarceration rates, with
our rate of 616 slightly above the national average of 573.

• In terms of the yearly admissions to California’s prisons, in 2005 we
had 70,573 admissions, and 61,999 parole violators.

• The next page puts our population into perspective. While we have
almost 62,000 parole violators returned during the year, this only
makes up a little over 11 percent of our total inmate population at any
given time. In addition, this percentage is projected to decrease over
time.

• The growth in our population over the last several years, and the
population that continues to grow at the greatest rate, as shown in our
chart, is the population of inmates who are serving life terms.

• What is the makeup of each of these groups of felons in prison?
Starting with felons serving a life term, these are people convicted of
first and second degree murder, certain acts of attempted murder,
kidnap for ransom and robbery, and “third-strike” felons.

• Parole Violators—there is a tendency to refer to any parolee returned
to prison without a new term as a “technical” parole violator. In
looking at the reasons why parolees return to prison over a year’s
period, however, the data show that 82% of parolees returned to
prison for these so-called “technical” violations were actually returned
for criminal conduct.

• Only 18% of the returns could truly be considered a technical or
“status” offense. In addition, of these returns, the majority of the 18%
of these returns were in cases where parolees had absconded while on
parole—these made up 65% of these cases—in which parole and local
law enforcement authorities had issued a warrant for the arrest of the
parolee for absconding while on parole. While this is not technically
a crime, parole absconders do pose a risk to public safety.

• Of the 18,508 parole violators in prison, a little over 3,000 are there
for “technical” parole violations. Factoring 65% of those for parole
absconders would leave you with a little over 2,000 parolees in for
technical violations.

• If the Department stopped returning technical parole violators to
prison, the inmate population would only be reduced by 2,000 to
3,000 inmates.

• Determinately-sentenced felons—Currently, this is the breakdown by
offense category of the felons housed in our facilities—over 85,000
were sentenced for crimes against a person, over 36,000 for property
offenses, over 35,000 for drug offenses, and almost 13,000 for other
crimes.

• Of our property offenders, almost 7,000 had one prior conviction for a
serious or violent felony, and another 6,000 had two or more
convictions.

• Of our drug offenders, almost 7,000 had one prior conviction for a
serious or violent felony, and another 5,000 had two or more
convictions.

• How many of our property and drug offenders are truly first time
offenders? Our data show that approximately two-thirds of these
offenders have at least one prior conviction.

http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=c...O1-cO7Tqrh_fDw

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Old 10-07-2009, 08:00 PM
ilbegone ilbegone is offline
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This is an ugly search. It reminds me of working in a back yard so full of dog shit that it is difficult to step between the piles of shit. This needs a rake, a shovel, and a wheel barrow. It's not pleasant to me.

There are a lot of directions concerning crimes, race and racism from and towards all directions, violence, victims, nationality, biased research, slanted journalism, opinion presented as fact, selective quotation of fact, apples and oranges, oxen to gore, propaganda, anything you want to hear to reinforce your preconceived notions. Loads of bullshit.

There are things which strike a common thread.

There is the information from the California Department Department of corrections above with a link to the whole document.

So far I have not been able to find verifiable demographic figures for county jails in California concerning demographics, charges, and convictions.

I'll wade through this a little more and provide a synopsis tomorrow or so.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go take a shower, maybe wash some of this off me.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

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High School Dropouts and The Economic Losses from Juvenile Crime in California.

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California Dropout Research Project Report #16, September 2009 http://cdrp.ucsb.edu/, By Clive R. Belfield Queens College, City University of New York and Henry M. Levin Teachers College, Columbia University [thanks to Dan Mitchel]

"California's juvenile crime rate is high. Juveniles commit one-in-six violent crimes and over one-quarter of all property crimes; they also commit crimes in school, victimizing one-quarter of all students and one-in-twelve teachers.

The economic loss from juvenile crime is substantial. In total, each juvenile cohort in California imposes an economic loss of $8.9 billion on the state's citizens. Part of the explanation for juvenile crime is poor education.

In this paper, we estimate the economic loss from juvenile crime associated with not completing high school before age 18. Using results from three separate studies and applying their results for California, we estimate the annual juvenile crime loss associated with high school dropouts at $1.1 billion.

Finally, we compare the losses from juvenile crime with the costs of improving the education system. We calculate that savings in juvenile crime alone will offset approximately 16% of the costs of providing these interventions."

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archive...05.html#022405

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Old 10-08-2009, 07:02 AM
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Conclusion of the essay Does State Policy Help or Hurt the Dropout Problem in California? From the California Drop Out Research Project study.


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The dropout problem will not be solved by more categorical programs or additional resources. The problem, as noted earlier, has to do with student disengagement from school. As also noted, the reasons for disengagement are multiple, overlapping, and complex. The issue of academic engagement can be addressed by improving the quality of the schooling experience for students.

Some causes of disengagement, however, lie beyond the schools’ control. Consequently, students may need a variety of coordinated social and health (both physical and mental) services that are not readily available or are now simply unavailable. When student behavior does trigger such services, it is often too late, as with the SARB interventions. Again, there is little known about how many districts provide such services and what difference such services may make. We know from the research that the key is early identification and support.

The key to an effective state role is to increase district capacity to identify at-risk students early and provide resources (both academic and social) to those students. The state also needs to find ways of improving district and school capacity to provide quality education services to students who have not been well served by the education system. Students who do not intend to go to college have few or no options for alternative education paths. For those students, there is little incentive to finish high school, particularly if they believe they cannot pass the high school exit exam or if they believe that a diploma is irrelevant. The state needs to provide technical assistance to schools that serve large numbers of at-risk students to develop curricula that is academically challenging and rigorous while it also prepares them for careers.

California currently spends substantial sums of money on various forms of dropout prevention programs; on supplemental instruction; on counseling, mentoring and outreach; career education such as the Regional Occupation Centers and Programs; adult education programs; and special programs for English language learners. Districts that serve students who might generally be referred to as “at-risk” benefit from a large number of categorical programs. The problem for state policy makers is that virtually nothing is known about the success of these various programs and why such programs seem to have so little impact on increasing school completion rates. To be sure, there are success stories, but there is nothing to suggest that any of those programs, either individually or in the aggregate, have a positive effect on student retention. More importantly, as this paper has emphasized throughout this discussion,there is no systematic, reliable data to inform policy makers of either the nature or magnitude of the problem.

Beyond data, it is clear that increasing school completion rates, especially among African American, Hispanic, and Native American students, should be a top priority for state policy makers.

There are, however, no ready answers. It is quite clear that adding more programs to the state’s dropout policy portfolio is not the answer. The answer lies in integrating existing programs and resources and creating greater accountability for those programs that target primarily at-risk students. Policy makers need to evaluate the role and efficacy of existing alternative education programs to understand better what kinds of state interventions are most helpful to those local officials—school and district administrators, counselors, teachers, other agency officials, social workers, and health care specialists—who are ultimately responsible for reducing the number of school dropouts. Curriculum reform certainly ought to figure prominently in the solution; so should mentoring, preschool, and continuing education.

Given the competition for state revenues, it is all the more important for policy makers to invest in those programs that use funds most efficiently and have the highest rates of success for dollars spent (Belfield & Levin, 2007).

To that end, state policy makers should evaluate the costs of various dropout prevention programs in relation to their effectiveness. In the absence of systematic evaluation, it appears that local dropout prevention programs operate idiosyncratically—the result of effort and commitment by individuals—rather than by program design. The question for policy makers is whether there are systematic policy design features of dropout prevention programs that show successful results across a large number of schools.

http://cdrp.ucsb.edu/dropouts/pubs_reports.htm

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Old 10-08-2009, 07:32 AM
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Summary and Conclusions to the essay Why Students Drop Out of School: A Review of 25 Years of Research from The California Drop Out Research Project


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The longstanding and widespread interest in the issue of high school dropouts has generated a vast research literature, particularly over the last ten years. The purpose of this study was to identify and review this literature. Restricting our focus to research studies published in scholarly journals found in the nation’s largest scientific database yielded 203 studies that have been published over the last 25 years, involving 387 separate analyses. To organize our review, we developed a conceptual framework that identified all the key factors that the research has identified as salient to understanding how, when, and why students drop out of high school.

These factors had to do with characteristics of individual students—their educational performance, behaviors, attitudes, and backgrounds—as well as the characteristics of the families, schools, and communities where they live and go to school. The review verified that indeed, a number of salient factors within each of these domains are associated with whether students drop out or graduate from high school. Although most of the studies were unable to establish a strong causal connection between the various factors and dropping out, they nonetheless suggest such a connection.

We learned a number of things from this review. The first is that no single factor can completely account for a student’s decision to continue in school until graduation. Just as students themselves report a variety of reasons for quitting school, the research literature also identifies a number of salient factors that appear to influence the decision. Second, the decision to drop out is not simply a result of what happens in school.

Clearly, students’ behavior and performance in school influence their decision to stay or leave. But students’ activities and behaviors outside of school—particularly engaging in deviant and criminal behavior—also influence their likelihood of remaining in school.
http://cdrp.ucsb.edu/dropouts/pubs_reports.htm

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Old 10-08-2009, 08:25 AM
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Conclusions to the December 2007 essay California High Schools That Beat the Odds in High School Graduation of the California Dropout Research Project


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This has been one of a collection of studies examining issues related to children dropping out of school conducted through the California Dropout Research Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Its major objective is to examine alternative methods in local schools that appear efficacious in keeping children in school through graduation. Rather than starting with a specific program or intervention and testing to see if it seems to make a difference, the “beating-the-odds” approach featured in this paper attempts to identify schools that appear to be achieving the desired effect.

There are several major objectives of this exercise. First, are there high schools in California that enroll high percentages of traditionally challenged students and yet still show strong, consistent performance in terms of low dropout rates, high graduation rates, and relatively high academic achievement? How many such schools can be so identified, where are they located, and what are their characteristics? For example, it may be that success on these measures is much more possible in smaller, more rural settings with a high degree of stability, than in urban settings with higher transiency, and perhaps fewer strong bonds to the community.

Second, to what extent are the leaders of these BTO schools able to articulate the methods they believe have contributed to these results? Third, are there clear strategies that other school leaders might follow, and/or over-arching themes from which they might learn?

As described earlier, the broad array of approaches for measuring dropouts creates one of the difficulties in attempting to identify “beating-the-odds” schools. Schools that appear strong on one measure may appear weak on another.

Recognizing this, we made determinations that are based on stability of results, but which are also ultimately somewhat subjective. That is, using different measures, other researchers may come up with a different list of BTO schools than derived through this study. Nevertheless, we feel the criteria we used were quite stringent, and that we were able to identify a strong set of BTO schools. Furthermore, the leaders of these schools were able to describe in detail some of the specific strategies they had employed which they attributed to affecting these results.

However, through the initial round of phone interviews we did find schools we considered to be “false positives.” That is, one respondent from a district in which three of the 22 BTO schools identified through this process are located indicated that the statistics we were observing resulted from transferring problematic students out of these schools rather than working with them to stay enrolled in their original school. This problem is noted in a 2007 Legislative Analyst Office study, which suggests that schools often encounter pressure to push low-performing students into alternative schools to evade responsibility for their progress (Hill, 2007). Alternative schools often have much higher dropout rates than the state average and account for a significant portion of California’s dropouts (Timar, Biag, Lawson, 2007).

At least one large urban district with several statistically strong BTO schools was unwilling to take the time to participate in this study, and so we do not know to what extent the schools identified as BTO in this district were employing exemplary practices. Most of the six high schools we feature in the narrative above are in smaller school districts. In five of the six cases they are the only high school in their district. This likely offers the advantages that smaller, more cohesive communities can bring in supporting children to stay in school. However, they also attributed their success to factors that could conceivably be employed in larger districts choosing to do so. For example, they cited the fact that the district administration was very focused and dedicated to their needs. The leaders of these schools also cited their ability to exercise considerable discretion over who was hired. These principals said their districts allowed them considerable autonomy to set priorities for their schools and to introduce and/or alter programs as needed to achieve high standards.

The principal of the BTO school located in a large district cited similar factors. These factors—district support (Datnow and Stringfield, 2000; Edmonds, 1979; Fuller, Loeb, Arshan, Chen, and Yi, 2007; McLaughlin and Talbert, 2003; Parrish, Perez, Merickel, and Liquianti, 2006), enhanced control over hiring (Fuller et al., 2007; Parrish et al., 2006; Perez et al. 2007; Purkey and Smith, 1983; Rosenholtz, 1985), and a certain degree of independence and autonomy (Marsh, 2000; Parrish et al., 2006; Purkey and Smith, 1983) —have also been found by other researchers as important in attempting to understand vastly different levels of achievement across schools with similar student populations.

In addition, given this context, several over-arching themes across respondents regarding what was done within these schools were identified: connecting with students, engaging parents and community, providing specific supports for students at risk, and creating a culture of accountability and high expectations. Again, these over-arching themes are neither surprising nor new. A recent publication from the Education Commission of the States cites early intervention, engagement, challenging courses, and smaller school size as organizational factors that can influence students to stay enrolled in high school (2007). In addition, high school reform literature indicates that addressing these issues can lead to higher student achievement and graduation rates (Quint, 2006; Herlihy and Quint, 2006).

Timar, Biag and Lawson (2007) suggest that dropping out can also be defined as a “professional problem” due to a lack of adequate training and time for teachers to identify students who may be at risk of dropping out. Accordingly, in this study we find that identified BTO schools have been able to maintain a high quality teaching staff through professional development and hiring practices. Further, improving instructional content and practice through curriculum design and professional development is also noted as a key strategy of effective schools (Herlihy & Quint, 2006).

Creating a personalized school climate where staff provide support for students’ academic and personal growth is crucial for student achievement (Quint, 2006). Through counseling programs and extracurricular activities, the schools highlighted in this study provide numerous opportunities for students to build relationships with staff and connect students to the school. Many of the schools included in this study provide vocational courses to prepare students for post secondary options. Quint (2006) argues that this helps increase student engagement thus motivating students to graduate. Timar, Biag, and Lawson (2007) also support utilizing targeted programs to provide additional support for students at risk of dropping out, but emphasize that further evaluation is needed to identify the most effective programs.

We consider these findings to be encouraging. Schools that are producing exemplary results with challenging student populations can be found. The relative consistency of findings in regard to the elements and strategies that are attributed to this success are also encouraging. While this does not indicate a clear prescription for success, it does suggest that what these schools are doing can be identified, and that it may be possible for others to learn from their success.

Thus, while all of these elements may not necessarily be replicated elsewhere (e.g. size and community context are outside a principal’s control), we believe it is possible to learn from what others are doing. For this reason, we considered it very important to name specific schools and to attempt to describe what they are doing in their own terms to the greatest extent possible. While far from full descriptions, what is included in this paper has been reviewed by each of these schools in an attempt to ensure fidelity with actual practice.

In summary, this study offers useful insights into what can be done to address California's dropout crisis. Specific schools can be found that are beating the odds on these vital outcomes and are creating explicit structures and supports to encourage high graduation rates. These practices can be adopted by other schools and should inform future policy

Riverdale High School, a small rural school in Fresno County, shows an estimated graduation rate of 100%.

Duarte High School, located about twenty miles east of Los Angeles, has an estimated graduation rate of 97%,

Sanger High School is located in a suburban community a few miles from Fresno with an estimated 96% graduation rate.

Selma High School is located in a suburban community of Fresno County and has an estimated 93% graduation rate.

Located in Los Angeles County, Bassett High School graduates an estimated 97% of its students.

Valley High School is in an urban community in south Sacramento and has an estimated graduation rate of 84%. Due to high student mobility there have been many challenges to maintaining low dropout rates

http://cdrp.ucsb.edu/dropouts/pubs_reports.htm