PV Democrats January Meeting

Join us for our in-person January club meeting.  Our meeting starts at 2:30 pm, but join us at 2 pm to chat with other Democrats.

The theme for this month’s meeting is Reimagining the Bail System

Our featured speaker is Robin Steinberg, the founder and CEO of The Bail Project, a national effort to combat mass incarceration by transforming the pretrial system in the US.

Robin  was a public defender in the Bronx for over 35 years representing low-income people in over-policed neighborhoods and she founded The Bronx Defenders, The Bronx Freedom Fund, and Still She Rises.  Robin is a frequent commentator on criminal justice issues and has contributed opinion pieces to The New York Times, The Marshall Project, and USA Today.  Her publications have appeared in leading law and policy journals, including NYU Review of Law & Social Change, Yale Law & Policy Review, and Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy.  Robin is a Gilbert Foundation Senior Fellow of the Criminal Justice Program at UCLA School of Law.

Robin will also be commenting on the vote against California Proposition 25, Replace Cash Bail with Risk Assessments  (2020), which was a referendum on Senate Bill 10, that was passed by the CA State Legislature August 2018, to make California the first state to end the use of cash bail for all detained suspects awaiting trials.  However, as soon as SB 10 passed, a referendum to overturn the bill was filed the next day.  The NO vote on Proposition 25 overturned the SB 10 vote in the November 2020 election.

Joining us in the discussion are:

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas D. Long.  Judge Long has been talking with our club about Reimaging Criminal Justice at several meetings and he has led the review of the US Supreme Court yearly decisions at our August meetings.  Judge Long was appointed to the bench in December 2015 by former governor Jerry Brown.  He also served as a Rancho Palos Verdes City (RPV) Councilman from 2003 to 2011 and was the Mayor of the city of RPV fro two terms in 2007 and 2011.

Cristine Soto DeBerry, Founder and Executive Director of the Prosecutors Alliance.  Cristine spent a decade as the Chief of Staff to San Francisco District Attorneys George Gascón and Chesa Boudin. She previously served as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Deputy Chief of Staff and started her career as a public defender in Los Angeles County.