By C1 Staff
Calif. – Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill yesterday that would have allowed journalists to set up interviews with specific inmates in state prisons.
Similar bills have passed over the governor’s desk over the past two decades, and each time it was vetoed, according to SF Weekly.
Brown’s reasons for blocking the bill were twofold: Wardens would only be able to deny interviews that posted an “immediate and direct threat” to the security of the prison, which he believed was too high a standard. He also said the bill would also offer criminals a celebrity status that would glorify their crimes and hurt their victims.
“Currently reporters are allowed to correspond with inmates by visiting them face-to-face, or contacting them by telephone and mail,” he wrote. “Wardens can also let reporters conduct random face-to-face interviews with tape recorders, notebooks and cameras.”
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who sponsored the bill, says Brown misses the point. Journalists are currently not allowed to request interviews with specific inmates – they can only meet with an inmate if the inmate files a request to meet him as an official prison visit, or if the reporter randomly runs into the inmate during a guided tour of the facility.
"[Press access is] a way for the public to know that the prisons it pays for are well-run,” Ammiano said in a statement. “The CDCR’s unwillingness to be transparent is part of what has led to court orders on prison health care and overcrowding.”
One bill that Brown did approve yesterday gave parole opportunities to juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole.