The California Legislature has begun to take steps to reform and regulate criminal justice and law enforcement, indicating that the growing national call for justice reform is working.
Both the state Assembly and Senate passed a bill requiring police to track racial profiling statistics. Law enforcement has notoriously—and conveniently—failed to track and analyze policing data. By supporting this legislation, the Legislature is beginning to change that. The law requires every state and local law enforcement agency to report the time, date, location, and reason for every stop, as well as the person's perceived gender and race.
The bill also requires that the Attorney General "establish the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board (RIPA) to eliminate racial and identity profiling and improve diversity and racial and identity sensitivity in law enforcement." RIPA will also be in charge of analyzing and disseminating collected data.
Unfortunately, a provision of the bill that would have required officers found engaging in racial profiling to participate in a training program was cut from the final version.
Unsurprisingly, law enforcement and many on the right opposed the bill, claiming it was "onerous" and "costly." "An officer [will be] spending an abundant amount of time doing paperwork rather than being on the streets,” said Sen. Jeff Stone, who apparently takes two hours to do what the rest of the world does in two minutes.
The Assembly also passed a bill restricting police access to certain digital communications, namely email. Keep reading for more.
Lawmakers will now be required to get a warrant to access digital communications, with a few exceptions.
Surprisingly, the regular law enforcement opposition stayed neutral on this facet. The bill passed even though it required a two-thirds vote, as it amends part of the state Constitution. It now goes to the Senate.
California also passed a bill raising the compensation rate for those wrongfully convicted, from $100 for every day spent in prison to $140. The bill would significantly increase the payout that wrongfully convicted former inmates receive, in an attempt to compensate for time and opportunity lost.
All has not been well in the Legislature, however, as an important bill limiting civil forfeiture didn't even make it out of the Assembly.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting live on the state Legislature's decisions.
Ultimately, these are three good laws that do important things: Restrict digital invasion, compensate the wronged, and track important data. But in order to get real reform, we have to do a lot more than this. The reform must be deeper, and accountability for police, prosecutors, and judges must be paramount.
Still, California is making an effort, one that has been spurred on by the outside activism that continues to call for change. The fight is working.