{"id":811,"date":"2013-08-09T09:17:30","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T13:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=811"},"modified":"2021-04-06T17:37:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T21:37:26","slug":"santa-clara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/09\/santa-clara\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Clara County, CA sheriff scraps plan to ban letters from home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/breaking-news\/ci_23825391\/santa-clara-county-jail-inmates-will-continue-receiving\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/San-Jose-Mercury News-8-9-13-250w.png\" alt=\"San Jose paper\" width=\"250\" height=\"243\" class=\"reportcover right\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Great news for families in Santa Clara County, California: Sheriff John Hirokawa has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/breaking-news\/ci_23825391\/santa-clara-county-jail-inmates-will-continue-receiving\">scrapped a destructive plan<\/a> to ban families from writing letters to loved ones in jail. As my report, &#8220;<a href=\"\/postcards\/\">Return to Sender: Postcard-only policies in jail<\/a>,&#8221; found, jail letter bans jeopardize the critical family ties that help incarcerated people succeed when they return home.<\/p>\n<p>Santa Clara residents were rightly outraged when they discovered that the Sheriff was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/ci_23271477\/all-mail-at-santa-clara-county-jail-be\">planning on banning letters<\/a> from the jail. With the leadership of local media and community organizing group <a href=\"http:\/\/www.siliconvalleydebug.org\">Silicon Valley De-Bug<\/a>, they held a powerful <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20160313235621\/http:\/\/www.siliconvalleydebug.org\/articles\/2013\/06\/26\/mail-jails\">public forum<\/a> to share their concerns with the Sheriff&#8217;s Department. And, to the sheriff&#8217;s credit, he called off the ban.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Santa Barbara County residents in Southern California are still <a href=\"https:\/\/keyt.com\/news\/2013\/03\/25\/jails-postcard-only-policy-angers-letter-writers\/\">fighting to overturn<\/a> the letter ban in the local jail. Santa Barbara Sheriff Bill Brown would be wise to follow Santa Clara County&#8217;s example and end the letter ban that undermines public safety and drives families apart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Successful community organizing led Sheriff John Hirokawa to cancel plans to limit correspondence to postcard only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letter-bans","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11928,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions\/11928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}