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Formerly incarcerated Californians are each being robbed of as much as $200 by the state as they are released from prison, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Alameda County.
The civil complaint alleges that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or CDCR, has wrongfully withheld some or all of the reentry funds called “gate money” from over a million people who were released from prison since 1994.
A CDCR spokesperson said the department could not comment on pending litigation.
A 1973 state law stipulates that people being released from incarceration that lasted for longer than six months are entitled to $200 of gate money, also referred to as release allowances. It made three narrow areas where CDCR could make rules governing its disbursement.
The 13-page filing Wednesday from attorneys with the University of California, Berkeley Criminal Law & Justice Center and the law firm Edelson PC requests class action status for plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges that as many as 30,000 people a year are unlawfully denied the money as the department diverts funds to clothing and transportation costs.
“California has long recognized that providing gate money helps people to successfully reintegrate into their communities, thereby enhancing public safety for us all,” said Chesa Boudin, former San Francisco district attorney and founding executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center.
“Yet the Department of Corrections has improperly diverted these funds to other purposes and continued to do so even after being reprimanded by the courts. Our lawsuit seeks to ensure that the agency which punishes people who break the law is itself fulfilling the letter and spirit of the law,” Boudin said.
A panel of three Orange County appellate judges ruled in a separate case in 2008, Sabatasso v. Superior Court, that CDCR had overstepped when it made regulations deciding which prisoners were eligible for gate money.
“The statute gives the department the right to promulgate rules in three stated instances: (1) where a prisoner has not served at least six months consecutively, to limit or eliminate payment if it would not help in rehabilitation; (2) to set out procedures to pay the allowance within the first 60 days of release; and (3) to eliminate paying the balance of the allowance where a prisoner has absconded,” Judge William Rylaarsdam wrote.
Yaman Salahi, an attorney at Edelson PC, said the department’s policy of deducting clothing and transportation costs from the $200 was making released inmates’ reentry more challenging.
These policies are not only unlawful — they are also exceptionally cruel.
Excerpt from the civil complaint
“Our clients served their sentences and were leaving prison to start new lives,” Salahi said. “But their efforts to reestablish themselves in society were made far more difficult by CDCR’s failure to provide the money they were owed,” Salahi said.
The suit seeks an end to the practice, a repeal of the department’s policy of deducting costs of clothing and transportation from release allowances, and payment of the money to anyone to whom it was denied.
“These policies are not only unlawful — they are also exceptionally cruel,” the complaint said. “With these unlawful regulations, CDCR has chosen to target people who do not even have clothes and transportation pre-arranged for them by loved ones, and who are among the most vulnerable people CDCR is tasked with assisting.”
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