California prisons are no longer withholding money they are supposed to give people at the time of their release, according to a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation memo obtained by CalMatters.
The policy change is meant to ensure that thousands of people leaving California prisons will receive their full $200 “gate money” allowance that they are entitled to under a 51-year-old state law. The stipend is intended to help people cover basic necessities in their initial days of freedom.
The new directive follows the filing of a class-action lawsuit and a recent legislative order mandating the department to stop withholding cash from formerly incarcerated people.
The corrections department didn’t hide the fact that it deducted money from release allowances. According to its regulations, the agency did so if someone did not have dress-out clothes or arrangements for transportation.
“We’re frustrated and disappointed that it took a lawsuit being filed to change an unlawful Department of Corrections’ policy, which should have been in compliance with the law from the very beginning,” said Chesa Boudin, one of the lead attorneys of the class-action lawsuit.
The class-action lawsuit filed in September by UC Berkeley’s Criminal Law & Justice Center and the law firm Edelson PC alleged that the agency illegally docked fees from over a million people since 1994. According to the lawsuit, the department “routinely withholds some or all of the funds based on eligibility criteria of its own making, criteria that violate the plain language of the law.”
At the urging of criminal justice advocacy groups, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a government funding bill on Sept. 30 that gave the department an additional $1.8 million for clothing and…
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