A Report On People Under Criminal Justice Supervision In Alameda County

Over the past decade, the number of adults in the US incarcerated by State or Federal authorities grew from 1,585,586 in 1995 to 2,135,901 in 2004, an average increase of 3.4% annually and a period increaseof one-third.1 In California, the prison population has grown over the last 10 years from 135,133 peoplein prison in 1995 to 163,939 by 2004 for an average of 2.75% annually and a period increase of over 21%.One of the realities of this massive increase in incarceration is that "they all come back." Over the last 10 years, the number of adults on parole from State or Federal prisons increased from 679,421 in 1995 to 765,355 in 2004, for an average annual rate of 2.7% and a period increase of 17%. Following the national pattern, the number of adults on parole in California increased by from 90,450 in 1995, to 110,130 in 2004, for an average annual rate of 2.3% and a period increase of over 21%. California leads the nation in the number of adults on parole; at the end of 2004 over 14% of people on parole in the US had been released from California prisons

California Dreaming?

Over the past few years, California became the setting for shocking tales of sex inequality and abuse in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Decades after women achieved educational parity. men still run the corporate world. In response to these stories exposed by the #MeToo movement, California joined the transnational corporate board quota movement by converting its voluntary quota into a hard one. Will California\u27s first mover status overcome constitutional objections and inspire other jurisdictions to act. Or is just Utopian dreaming, California-style? This Essay argues that despite its many flaws, the quota may succeed in curbing male over-representation on corporate boards. After contextualizes the quota within the transnational corporate board quota movement, it rejects the U.S. reaction that emphasizes the private sector\u27s dominion over equality remedies. Despite the U.S. resistance to quotas, comparative experience reveals both that the private sector manages how quota implementation occurs. The Essay concludes that some public intervention--in concert with private efforts--remains necessar

Deer Herd Management Using the Internet: A Comparative Study of California Targeted By Data Mining the Internet

An ongoing project to investigate the use of the internet as an information source for decision support identified the decline of the California deer population as a significant issue. Using Google Alerts, an automated keyword search tool, text and numerical data were collected from a daily internet search and categorized by region and topic to allow for identification of information trends. This simple data mining approach determined that California is one of only four states that do not currently report total, finalized deer harvest (kill) data online and that it is the only state that has reduced the amount of information made available over the internet in recent years. Contradictory information identified by the internet data mining prompted the analysis described in this paper indicating that the graphical information presented on the California Fish and Wildlife website significantly understates the severity of the deer population decline over the past 50 years. This paper presents a survey of how states use the internet in their deer management programs and an estimate of the California deer population over the last 100 years. It demonstrates how any organization can use the internet for data collection and discovery

Influence of irrigation on land hydrological processes over California

In this study, a regional climate model (RCM) is employed to investigate the effect of irrigation on hydrology over California through implementing a “realistic irrigation” scheme. Our results indicate that the RCM with a realistic irrigation scheme commonly practiced in California can capture the soil moisture and evapotranspiration (ET) variation very well in comparison with the available in situ and remote sensing data. The RCM results show significant improvement in comparison with those outputs from the default run and the commonly used runs with fixed soil moisture at field capacity. Furthermore, the model reproduces the observed decreasing trends of the reference ET (i.e., ET0) from the California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS). The observed decreasing trend is most likely due to the decreasing trend of downward solar radiation shown by models and CIMIS observations. This issue is fundamental in projecting future irrigation water demand. The deep soil percolation rate changes depending on the irrigation method and irrigation duration. Finally, the model results show that precipitation change due to irrigation in California is relatively small in amount and mainly occurs along the midlatitudes in the western United States

Precipitation in a warming world: Assessing projected hydro-climate changes in California and other Mediterranean climate regions.

In most Mediterranean climate (MedClim) regions around the world, global climate models (GCMs) consistently project drier futures. In California, however, projections of changes in annual precipitation are inconsistent. Analysis of daily precipitation in 30 GCMs reveals patterns in projected hydrometeorology over each of the five MedClm regions globally and helps disentangle their causes. MedClim regions, except California, are expected to dry via decreased frequency of winter precipitation. Frequencies of extreme precipitation, however, are projected to increase over the two MedClim regions of the Northern Hemisphere where projected warming is strongest. The increase in heavy and extreme precipitation is particularly robust over California, where it is only partially offset by projected decreases in low-medium intensity precipitation. Over the Mediterranean Basin, however, losses from decreasing frequency of low-medium-intensity precipitation are projected to dominate gains from intensifying projected extreme precipitation. MedClim regions are projected to become more sub-tropical, i.e. made dryer via pole-ward expanding subtropical subsidence. California's more nuanced hydrological future reflects a precarious balance between the expanding subtropical high from the south and the south-eastward extending Aleutian low from the north-west. These dynamical mechanisms and thermodynamic moistening of the warming atmosphere result in increased horizontal water vapor transport, bolstering extreme precipitation events

Precipitation regime change in Western North America: The role of Atmospheric Rivers.

Daily precipitation in California has been projected to become less frequent even as precipitation extremes intensify, leading to uncertainty in the overall response to climate warming. Precipitation extremes are historically associated with Atmospheric Rivers (ARs). Sixteen global climate models are evaluated for realism in modeled historical AR behavior and contribution of the resulting daily precipitation to annual total precipitation over Western North America. The five most realistic models display consistent changes in future AR behavior, constraining the spread of the full ensemble. They, moreover, project increasing year-to-year variability of total annual precipitation, particularly over California, where change in total annual precipitation is not projected with confidence. Focusing on three representative river basins along the West Coast, we show that, while the decrease in precipitation frequency is mostly due to non-AR events, the increase in heavy and extreme precipitation is almost entirely due to ARs. This research demonstrates that examining meteorological causes of precipitation regime change can lead to better and more nuanced understanding of climate projections. It highlights the critical role of future changes in ARs to Western water resources, especially over California

California's Secret Energy Surplus: The Potential for Energy Efficiency

Assesses the achievable energy efficiency potential over the next ten years across California for all electricity customers using hundreds of commercially available measures

Totally Class-Less?: Examining Bristol-Myer\u27s Applicability to Class Actions

In June 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court tightened the specific jurisdiction doctrine when it dismissed several plaintiffs’ claims in a mass tort action against pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) for lack of personal jurisdiction. The action was brought in a California state court and involved several hundred plaintiffs alleging that they were injured by Plavix, a drug BMS manufactures. The Supreme Court held that California could not constitutionally exercise personal jurisdiction over BMS as to the nonresident plaintiffs, who did not have an independent connection to California. While the nonresident plaintiffs argued that California had specific jurisdiction because their claims were identical to the California residents’ claims (with the only difference being that their experience with Plavix occurred in other states), the Court held that these claims did not arise out of BMS’s contacts with California, but rather out of BMS’s contacts with the particular states in which these plaintiffs were injured. In so holding, the Court emphasized that enabling California to exercise jurisdiction in this context would infringe on the sovereignty of other states—more specifically, the states who housed the nonresident plaintiffs involved in the action. This Note explores whether class actions should be bound by this decision. The fundamental question, then, is whether class actions are meaningfully distinguishable from mass tort actions such that they avoid Bristol-Myers’s reach

Managed Aquifer Recharge as a Tool to Enhance Sustainable Groundwater Management in California

A growing population and an increased demand for water resources have resulted in a global trend of groundwater depletion. Arid and semi-arid climates are particularly susceptible, often relying on groundwater to support large population centers or irrigated agriculture in the absence of sufficient surface water resources. In an effort to increase the security of groundwater resources, managed aquifer recharge (MAR) programs have been developed and implemented globally. MAR is the approach of intentionally harvesting and infiltrating water to recharge depleted aquifer storage. California is a prime example of this growing problem, with three cities that have over a million residents and an agricultural industry that was valued at 47 billion dollars in 2015. The present-day groundwater overdraft of over 100 km3 (since 1962) indicates a clear disparity between surface water supply and water demand within the state. In the face of groundwater overdraft and the anticipated effects of climate change, many new MAR projects are being constructed or investigated throughout California, adding to those that have existed for decades. Some common MAR types utilized in California include injection wells, infiltration basins (also known as spreading basins, percolation basins, or recharge basins), and low-impact development. An emerging MAR type that is actively being investigated is the winter flooding of agricultural fields using existing irrigation infrastructure and excess surface water resources, known as agricultural MAR. California therefore provides an excellent case study to look at the historical use and performance of MAR, ongoing and emerging challenges, novel MAR applications, and the potential for expansion of MAR. Effective MAR projects are an essential tool for increasing groundwater security, both in California and on a global scale. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the most common MAR types and applications within the State of California and neighboring semi-arid regions

Savage Desert, American Garden: citrus labels and the selling of California, 1877-1929

In 1877, a year after the railroad reached Southern California, the first shipment of California oranges left the Los Angeles groves of William Wolfskill, bound for St. Louis, Missouri. The box-ends were branded ‘Wolfskill California Oranges’, ensuring that the geographical origins of the fruit were emphasised from the very beginning of their exportation to the Midwest and East. During the 1880s, the innovations of irrigation and refrigerated cars combined with new railroads, massive in-migration and land development to turn California into, in Douglas Sackman’s words, an ‘orange empire’. By 1900, this empire had surpassed Florida as the United States’ leading producer of fruit, while, as one historian explains, ‘the orange crop had passed the cash returns from gold’ found in California. From virtually none a few decades earlier, the average American in 1914 ate over 40 oranges per year, and orange juice had become part of the standard American breakfast. By then some thirty thousand railroad carloads—approximately twelve million orange crates—valued at $20 million, were steaming east from the Golden State each year. Adorning these crates were, in the words of Kevin Starr, ‘the inventive labels’ whose ‘selling of California along with oranges as an image in the national imagination’ are the focus of this article