More new laws for 2021

As is tradition, a new year brings new laws for Californians. This is a brief roundup of more new laws coming for the new year.

California closing state youth prisons

For decades, many California teens convicted of serious crimes — such as robbery, assault, and murder — were sent to state juvenile prisons.

This year Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the closure of these state facilities. Under a new law, California’s three remaining youth prisons will no longer accept newly convicted youth after July 2021.

Instead, counties will be responsible for young offenders who’ve committed the most serious offenses.

T hose counties have until July to create plans to incor porate youn g people into their current juvenile hall and probation systems, but it’s unclear how much funding they’ll receive from the state.

Opponents, including the California State Association of Counties, worry that counties are unprepared to adapt to the new law — and that this may drive them to send more young people to adult prisons.

Some youth advocates agree, but argue that being closer to home will help convicted youth stay connected with their community, and lower the chance that they commit crimes in the future.

The state prison closures don’t affect the 750 youth already incarcerated in state juvenile facilities. After all of them have been released or age out of the facilities at age 25, the state Division of Juvenile Justice will shut down entirely.

California committee to study slavery reparations

More than 4 million Africans and their descendants were enslaved throughout the United States.

While California joined the Union in 1850 as a state free of slavery, the Legislature passed the California Fugitive Slave Act in 1852, which mandated that government officials and ordinary white citizens help slaveholders recapture people who escaped.

Now, 170 years later, the state is beginning to formally grapple with this lesser known history.

A new law — carried by San Diego Democratic Assemblymember Shirley Weber — establishes a nine-person committee to study California’s complicity in slavery, develop proposals on what reparations might look like for descendants of enslaved people, and determine who might get paid.

Reparations can take many forms — they could be direct cash payments or subsidized education and health care, or assistance for down payments on housing.

The new law won the support of a large coalition of social justice groups. But in the state legislature, support fell along party lines.

Most Republican lawmakers voted against the idea, arguing that reparations is a federal issue, and that state money should not be used to study it.

Some reparations scholars also have reservations about the new law, arguing the magnitude of what needs to be repaid can be achieved only at the federal level.

But in signing the bill, Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “This is not just about California. This is about making an impact and a dent across the rest of the country.”

Fewer new laws than usual will kick in, given that the coronavirus pandemic shortened and dominated the Legislature’s 2020 session.