On Sunday, May 14th, from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., No New Jails brought a huge Mother’s Day card to the Century Regional Jail in Los Angeles and asked people waiting in line to visit loved ones in the jail to sign the card. People could also sign the card online if they were not able to go to LA.

The card for the governor demanded that 4,500 women be released from state prison, rather than creating 4,500 new prison and jail beds. The card was created in response to a bill in Sacramento that has proposed moving 4,500 women from state prison into smaller privately-run prisons, many of which will be located in Los Angeles County. The bills AB 2066 and AB 2917 target women who the system has determined do not "need" to be in prison. These measures would put the women in new “community” prisons, called “Community Corrections Facilities.” These are simply privatized prisons: new name, new cell, same cage. No New Jails' demand would reduce the women's prison population by 40%.

No New Jails wants the state to put prison funds into more programming and more services for paroled women. It says that putting women into locked “treatment centers” is not really releasing them, sending them home, or helping them to re-enter society. Read more

No New Jails is a coalition of social justice organizations. Co-sponsors of the Mother's Day event included Critical Resistance, the Labor Community Strategy Center, Global Women's Strike, Adelante!, the CSULA Peace & Justice Coalition, California Prison Moratorium Project, LACAN, the Youth Justice Coalition, United Coalition East Prevention Project, and others.

Critical Resistance's Mother's Day page | ACLU's Women in Prison Page | Women in Prison, by Marilyn Buck | Infoshop.org's The American Gulag 2004 Faultlines article about cross-gender pat searches | California NOW's Women in Prison page | Amnesty USA's women in prison page