California pushes forward on criminal justice reform, still has work to do

The California Legislature has begun to take steps to reform and regulate criminal justice and law enforcement, indicating that the growing national call for justice reform is working.  

Both the state Assembly and Senate passed a bill requiring police to track racial profiling statistics. Law enforcement has notoriously—and conveniently—failed to track and analyze policing data. By supporting this legislation, the Legislature is beginning to change that. The law requires every state and local law enforcement agency to report the time, date, location, and reason for every stop, as well as the person's perceived gender and race.

The bill also requires that the Attorney General "establish the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board (RIPA) to eliminate racial and identity profiling and improve diversity and racial and identity sensitivity in law enforcement." RIPA will also be in charge of analyzing and disseminating collected data.

Unfortunately, a provision of the bill that would have required officers found engaging in racial profiling to participate in a training program was cut from the final version.

Unsurprisingly, law enforcement and many on the right opposed the bill, claiming it was "onerous" and "costly." "An officer [will be] spending an abundant amount of time doing paperwork rather than being on the streets,” said Sen. Jeff Stone, who apparently takes two hours to do what the rest of the world does in two minutes.  

The Assembly also passed a bill restricting police access to certain digital communications, namely email. Keep reading for more.