California reparations panel calls for compensation to be awarded to prisoners

California’s controversial reparations panel is pushing for the state legislature to close ten prisons, as well as ensure current inmates also receive fair wages and are eligible to vote.

It was previously reported that the panel was seeking to pass legislation creating a wealth tax, mansion tax and/or property tax to fund multi-billion dollar repairs. The alleged figure quoted per person is 3,000.

At their meeting in San Diego this weekend, where expert members of the public testified on various issues, including prison reform, the panel preliminarily approved recommending that ten prisons be shaken while they debate what should be done with the sites.

California state prisons house some of the most notorious inmates in the country, including serial killers and longtime gang members.

Savings from prison closures will be used to fund the work of the new government agency being created to dispense reparations, the California Freedmen’s Affairs Bureau.

The group has recommended more comfortable treatment for current inmates, including eliminating certain types of punishment and paying them more money for work done while incarcerated.

The panel’s report recommended removing the right to cancel visits as a form of punishment. The report also recommended developing safe spaces for inmates to spend time with their children “in a non-institutional and non-punitive environment.”

The report wants to allow inmates to choose what programs and jobs they undertake while in prison, as well as provide more funding for educational opportunities for inmates.

The names and locations of the prisons were not established in the report. California has 34 active state prisons.

An activist speaking about the prison system told the panel: “There’s no way they’re going to rehabilitate us in these prisons today and I heard them say, ‘Let’s train them better…’ No, no, no.

He continued: ‘If you want to be serious about reparations, let last be first on this case… I lost a brother in 2011 in the penitentiary. He died of a staph infection. Four years ago, my older brother was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for manslaughter, which only goes up to 11 years.

They still do it to us today! Let’s stop this.

The task force has yet to establish the amount of money to be delivered nor has it established what prerequisites recipients will need to meet. At the most recent meeting, California residency was raised as the only prerequisite.

Task force member Cheryl Grills said last weekend: ‘We want to be as inclusive as possible, because harm is everywhere. It is pervasive and affects all blacks.’

Kamilah V. Moore, chair of the task force, said the panel can support allowing those who were “injured” in California but subsequently moved to another state to apply.

The only union states that currently allow inmates to vote are Maine and Vermont, which counts Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders among its representatives.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, 28 percent of California’s 90,000 inmates are black, while 20 percent of those in county jails are also black.

Career criminal Marion Suge Knight, left, founder of Death Row Records, will not receive parole until 2034. Pedophile and vile murderer Marcus Wesson, right, is on death row after being convicted of kill nine of his children.

Killers like the infamous Golden State Killer could be about to get more money for prison labor

Other recommendations included giving inmates the right to vote, allowing inmates to pay at a fair market rate for work done while in prison, eliminating the death penalty, more college scholarships for black high school graduates, and putting available interest-free loans for blacks. -own business.

The task force also voted to extend its work until July 2024, the group was originally supposed to wrap up its efforts in July of this year.

speaking to california black media, Moore said: ‘The task force supports, in spirit, the extension of the life of the task force, for another year, on July 1, 2024, for implementation purposes only.

“We don’t authorize or write legislation, but we all agree as a working group to continue this work to ensure that repairs become a reality in California.”

Inmates who could be granted the right to vote include Death Row Records founder and career criminal Marion ‘Suge’ Knight, or Marcus Wesson, who is on death row after being convicted. for murdering nine of their children, plus 14 counts of rape, as well as Chester Turner, who was convicted of murdering 10 women in 2014, and Michael Hughes, who killed at least 10 women in the early 1990s.

The repair committee held a meeting that lasted over 15 hours over a two day period this weekend.

California’s notorious San Quentin Prison, home to some of the most notorious inmates in the state.

In 2022, the committee made the controversial decision to limit reparations to descendants of black people in the United States beginning in the 19th century, either as freedmen or enslaved.

In September, economists began listing preliminary estimates of what the state could owe as a result of discriminatory policies. But they said they need more data to come up with more complete numbers.

Moore said at the time that the group had not decided on any dollar amount or what form the repairs might take, nor where the money would come from.

Calls for reparations to compensate black Americans for the damage caused by slavery are nothing new, but left-leaning states and cities have recently run into trouble trying to put those ideas into practice.

Many proposals have been controversial, with questions about who gets paid, how much and by whom, proving divisive.

The other suggestion raised at the California reparations task force meeting on Friday were proposals to tax the wealthy, such as through a state estate tax or a mansion tax; incentivize wealthy individuals to help finance repairs by providing tax breaks; o help all taxpayers below the median wealth line through a tax credit, MarketWatch reports.

All of their suggestions were based on the notion that the current US tax code favors the wealthy, who they say are more likely to be white.

“Our tax laws, as written, have a disparate impact,” testified Dorothy Brown, a tax professor at Georgetown Law and author of The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes African-Americans and How We Can Fix It.

Kamilah V. Moore, chair of the task force, said the panel may support allowing those who were “injured” in California but subsequently moved to another state to apply.

“Blacks are likely to pay higher taxes,” he said, because they are less likely to get access to the same tax breaks as their white peers.

He said the best idea to finance the repairs would be “an estate tax credit applicable to all taxpayers in households with below-average wealth.”

“Given the racial wealth disparity, this will result in a disproportionate percentage of black households receiving the credit,” he said.

Meanwhile, two estate planners introduced the idea of ​​taxing ‘increased’ wealth to replace what they called ‘stolen’ wealth.

Sarah Moore Johnson and Raymond Odom claimed that the racial wealth gap widened after 1981, when then-President Reagan implemented the largest tax cut in US history.

The two cited 2019 Federal Reserve data showing the average white household had $812,000 more than the average black household.

They proposed creating a state estate tax, a mansion tax or a graduated property tax, though they noted that it might not be possible in California, because Proposition 13 taxes property based on its value when it was sold.

Moore Johnson and Odom even proposed a ‘metaverse’ tax.

And in her testimony, Moore Johnson, a founding partner of Washington, DC-based Birchstone Moore, also proposed implementing a reparations tax fund that could receive charitable donations.