» Without a country: Trying to get back to the only life he knew
Luis Luna, 20, was smuggled to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 3. He grew up, went to school, found jobs. Then the Washington state resident was deported after a cop pulled him over for a broken headlight. He hopes to return on the undercarriage of a boxcar.
» LA tries new test to find gang members wanting out
The new psychological test picks up where the first left off.
USC researchers came up with measures of the strength of a gang member’s allegiance and to what extent he derives his identity from the gang.
“The group exerts a powerful influence on the individual. With gangs, we want to try to reduce that group influence,” said Karen Hennigan, assistant psychology professor at USC who developed the questionnaire. “So the question is ‘how well can you hold your own against the group?’ We call it the ‘I position’.”
Anti-gang counselors, who are often former gang members, will ask questions ranging from participation in sports and church groups to the number of family dependents to reactions to such statements as “being in a group is an important part of my life.”
One challenge may be finding gang members willing to take the survey, particularly if it’s perceived as judgmental.
Hennigan said anti-gang counselors will approach gang members saying the survey will be used to help improve their lives. At the very least, the aim is to get gang members to stop violent behavior, if they can’t exit the gang altogether.
» Probation Chief Donald Blevins Learns He’s History on Eve of “Realignment”
LA County Probation Chief Donald Blevins is out—according to multiple sources inside and close to the LA County Board of Supervisors’ offices. WitnessLA has learned that, although the Supervisors had yet to take an official vote on the matter, Blevins himself was quietly informed mid-week last week.
Steps in the exit process continued early Tuesday morning in a closed door session where the Supes discussed the rough terms of Blevins’ departure.
Rumors that the Probation Chief was headed for the door have been circulating for nearly six months. However, the back room chatter gained intensity this past summer during the fights over which LA County agency—Probation or the Sheriff’s Department— should supervise the tens of thousands of non-violent parolees who will, as of this coming Saturday, Oct 1, be transferred from state control to LA County control, under the new California corrections policy known as “realignment.”
Probation was the winner of that particular political tug-of-war (if you can call anyone a winner). Yet, right before the decision was made, the primary unions that represent nearly all Probation’s employees hit Blevins with a nearly unprecedented “no confidence vote” aimed at his performance as chief.
Yet it is precisely because of the fact that the already-troubled LA County Probation Department is madly—and very messily—gearing up for this new influx of parolees, that the timing of Blevins’ now-confirmed exit is, in some ways, surprising.
Until recently, the Board of Supes didn’t have three firm votes to oust the Probation Chief, who is liked personally by many, but also increasingly viewed as not up to the task of reforming a badly broken Probation Department. Both Gloria Molina and Mark Ridley-Thomas have reportedly been leaning for some time toward replacing Blevins. There is speculation that Mike Antonovich may be the newly emerged third vote, but this is only, as I say, speculation.
In any case, someone among the remaining three Supes (Antonovich, Knabe and Yaroslavsky) was persuaded to hop the fence at this critical time. It may be that, faced with waiting until the realignment process was in process to make a change at the top, or acting now, the Board felt that, while neither choice was ideal, it was best to move ASAP.
Yet it is likely that the decision to oust Blevins has most to do with the last couple of scathing reports from the Justice Department regarding the depressing lack of progress in reforming the County’s juvenile probation camps, as required by the DOJ.
With talk of a possible Federal Consent Decree long in the air, the Supervisors may have felt that they had no choice but to move on Blevins, and to move fast—if they were to have even a prayer of prevent the DOJ from stepping in with very big feet.
“Let’s just say that Blevins has not been the leader that everyone hoped he would be,” said a juvenile probation insider.
Cal Remington, who is now second in command to Blevins, will take over as the new acting head of Probation when Bevins departs.
However, Remington, while popular in and around the Supervisors’ offices and in Probation as a whole, has reportedly made it clear he will not stay. Thus a national search will begin for a new Chief as soon as Donald Blevins exits.
In the meantime, aside from the Probation Chief’s job fate, the parolees arrive this weekend. We all hope very much that an adequate system will be in place to productively supervise their reentry into their—and our—communities.
NOTE: The above photo was taken at a meeting held this past Thursday with around 80 reentry advocates at Chuco’s Justice Center in Inglewood. There, for nearly three hours, Blevins was peppered with questions about what he was willing to do as head of LA County Probation to reform the reareentry process so that it actually was actually—you know— helpful to people coming out of prison, rather than just a form of brittle oversight that amounts to little more than waiting for parolees to screw up. Aside from one moment when he threatened to leave the room, for most of the evening, the Chief answered in mostly general terms, but with polite patience. Knowing now what Donald Blevins knew then—namely that he had learned the day before that he was being shown the door by the Supes—in retrospect the night cannot help but gain a wildly ironic pallor.
» San Francisco tops state’s foster care rates
Although child-welfare experts say that taking kids away from parents often does more harm than good — even in cases of neglect or abuse — San Francisco apparently puts kids in foster care more than almost any other California county once poverty is accounted for.
Not only that, but San Francisco repeatedly places the same children in foster care, suffering the highest rate of foster care recidivism of any large county in the state… advocates for foster care youth in The City said they were not particularly surprised by the statistic. Rachel Antrobus from Transitional Age Youth San Francisco said that while she agrees the courts try to avoid placing children in foster care, she has witnessed cases where not all other options have been explored, or where misunderstandings or racial prejudices lead to an inappropriate placement.
» Taking Adavantage of a Second Chance- A Former Gang Member Gets to Stay in the U.S.
Hector Tobar’s LA Times story is one you shouldn’t miss. Here’s a clip from the story’s opening:
Before this week, the last time I’d seen Obed Silva was in an immigration court in downtown L.A. On that day, he rolled his wheelchair to the witness box and explained to a judge why he shouldn’t be deported.
That was in 2009. Born in Mexico but raised in Orange County, Silva is a 32-year-old former gang member paralyzed from a gunshot injury who reinvented himself as a scholar. It was the errors of his youth — as a teenager he shot and wounded a man at an O.C. party — that led to the deportation proceeding.
Professors at his alma mater, Cal State L.A., testified in immigration court on his behalf. After I told his story in this column, even a conservative talk-show host said he deserved to stay in the U.S. And in December, the government agreed to stop the deportation proceedings against him.
After nearly four years of court dates and adjournments, Silva’s final appearance before a judge lasted only a few minutes, he recalled. “Next thing I knew, the judge said, ‘You’re free to go.’”
This week Silva and I met again, at his mother’s home in Buena Park. I’d come to see what he was doing with his second chance.
He’s teaching writing at Cypress College and tackling his own painful story in a book. Much of his manuscript is about another man born in Mexico, a heavy drinker who was deported many years ago, and who isn’t missed on this side of the border:
Obed’s father, the late Juan Silva.
Juan Silva was, as Obed writes, “an alcoholic, a drug-addict and a wife beater.” Juan Silva, aged 48 at his death, was one of those fraught men who live hard and leave a lifetime of wreckage in their wake.
“I came to this country to run away from him,” Obed’s mother, Marcela Mendoza, told me. Juan Silva was, by Mendoza’s account, obsessed with the family that had escaped him. Soon after they left, he followed them northward……
