With only two years remaining before she is termed out of office, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass is pushing for broad reforms in California’s criminal justice system. These moves come in the form of five pieces of legislation that could, among other outcomes, keep low-risk parolees from re-entering prison for minor violations.

In a teleconference with reporters last week, Bass acknowledged being “primarily consumed by the budget” crisis in Sacramento for much of the year she has spent as one of the state’s three most powerful politicians, but said “there is other business that impacts our community that I need to get done. I want to use my last term, and especially being in the position of speaker, to try to [institute] some reforms needed in the criminal justice system.”

Among the bills Bass wants to shepherd through the legislature: Assembly Bill 1376, which would create an independent, multi-jurisdictional body to establish new sentencing guidelines and devise policies to minimize recidivism; Assembly Bill 845 would result in adjusted duties for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Re-Entry Commission; Assembly Bill 777, which would aid inmates in the transition to post-prison life by providing them with identification cards; Assembly Bill 785, which, according to its text, would implement “a new evidence-based parole violation decision making instrument,” and broaden parole agents’ ability to “determine the most appropriate sanctions for parolees that have violated parole”; and Assembly Bill 750, which would “authorize courts to develop … reentry programs targeted at preventing recidivism among low-level, non-violent offenders.”

All of the bills are in their early stages, and to become law require passage in both houses of the legislature and the governor’s signature. Criminal justice reform is considered one of the trickiest areas of public policy, but Bass said she is motivated to see the bills through “because African-Americans are so disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system.”

Saying that she wants to “pull low-risk offenders out of the revolving door of recidivism,” Bass wondered “whether expensive incarceration is an appropriate response to a low-risk parolee’s technical violation.”

“I am calling for reform to our parole system since we do have the highest recidivism state in the nation,” said Bass. “I’m calling for the establishment of a re-entry commission, so community-based organizations can receive funding to help reintegrate inmates, [or] ex-offenders, when they come into our community. I am also calling for … formation of a sentencing commission so that we can look at our sentencing laws.”

The speaker’s efforts were applauded by Adrian Dove, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality of California, who said “the … government is making a business out of sending African-Americans to prison.” According to CDCR figures, African-American males constitute 28.9 percent of California’s prison inmates, while Latinos comprise 39.3 percent. In addition, most inmates were convicted of controlled substance possession and more than half returned to prison within a two-year period.

“All of these laws are very much needed,” said Dove. “We need a judicial review or a panel that reviews these cases. I mean we have a ‘third-strike’ guy who stole a slice of pizza and he was sent up for life in prison.”

A former parole officer who worked that position in both Watts and East Los Angeles, Dove saw firsthand how the Black community was affected by the policies targeted for reform.

“Years ago I was a parole officer in South Central,” said Dove, whose area of responsibility was about only eight square miles but involved a caseload of about 100 people. “In South Central I went almost door-to-door and everybody in the neighborhood was on parole. No matter what little thing they did, they were booked, carded and put into the system. So, basically you had a lot of normal people in South Central that were going into the system.”

David Horne, executive director of the California African American Political and Economic Institute at Cal State Dominguez Hills, agreed with formation of the proposed commission. He said its “prime directive” should be to “get former inmates back into society so that they become productive members as opposed to them simply getting into recidivism and doing things that will get them right back into prison.”