Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price Leads Expansion of Drug Courts & Collaborative Courts Calendar
By Post Staff
The Alameda County DA Accountability Table (ACDAAT), a coalition made up of 10 community-based organizations, is praising Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s office for investing in keeping children within the juvenile justice system rather than sending them to adult incarceration.
In Alameda County, youth who remain in the juvenile system are more likely to benefit from age-appropriate rehabilitation opportunities such as restorative justice programs, educational opportunities, and trade and certification programs, as well as progress reviews in court every six months, services that better prepare youth to re-enter as contributing members in the community.
Research shows that prosecuting youth as adults is racially discriminatory, harmful, and disruptive to youth development. Youth in the adult system face longer and harsher sentences, are less likely to receive age-appropriate care and services and are more likely to be re-arrested than youth who stay in the juvenile system, according to a press statement issued by ACDAAT.
The ACDAAT Coalition supports the goal of ending all youth transfers, interrupting the juvenile-to-adult prison pipeline by prioritizing youth rehabilitation in age-appropriate settings.
Many Alameda County youth are traumatized by a multitude of issues such as parents experiencing loss of employment, housing, and health care, inadequate educational support, the incarceration and deportation of loved ones, and intergenerational poverty.
Youth of color, especially Black and Brown youth, are disproportionately transferred to adult court in Alameda County. Ninety-seven percent of all adult prosecutions of youth in the county from 2006 to 2018 were youth of color, the press statement said.
“All youth are sacred, and young people should be seen for more than their worst mistakes,” said J. Vasquez, policy and legal services manager at Communities United for Restorative Justice (CURYJ). “We should instead invest finite county resources into community-driven solutions that hold youth accountable without causing them, their families, and our communities long-term harm.”
The Alameda County DA Accountability Table is a coalition of Bay Area community-based organizations committed to addressing root causes of violence, ending mass incarceration, police accountability, and eliminating racism from the criminal legal system.
The table members include: ACLU of Northern California, Urban Peace Movement, CURYJ, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, East Bay Community Law Center, The Justice Reinvestment Coalition, Alameda Participatory Defense Hub, Anti Police-Terror Project Policy Advocacy Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law, and Oakland Rising.
