About Julia Landau

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Published Stories:

Reentering Richmond

HealthyCal.org

Assembly Bill 109, or prison realignment, is the biggest change in the criminal justice system in decades. This legislation puts low-level felons and parole violators in county jail instead of state prison. Upwards of 90% of these “non-serious” offenders getting transferred to county jails will return to their neighborhoods within the year. The legislation puts in sharp focus alternatives to incarceration, and the assumption that local communities have more at stake than prisons when it comes to rehabilitation. Contra Costa County has developed a plan for realignment. But in the city of Richmond, who will take the lead in helping the formerly incarcerated?

Homeless Courts: Freedom from unpaid fines is just the beginning

HealthyCal.org/The Bay Citizen

Contra Costa County’s Homeless Court is for people who have unpaid tickets usually relating to not having a stable address. Once they complete 30 days in a program—whether it’s community service in a shelter (“life skills”), a drug or alcohol rehab program, or job training—they can get their unpaid tickets cleared.

Drug Addicts Unite!

East Bay Express

Galvanized by a protest on the capitol steps, a new political lobbying union is forming, representing a notorious underclass: drug users, past and present.

Getting Out, Staying Out

Richmond Confidential

Going straight after getting out of prison, Andres Abarra explains, is hard; he earned more dealing drugs than he ever will now. “You go from having money to buy sports cars, eating at nice places, to having $200 in your pocket when you get out.” That’s the gate money the state doles out to each former inmate upon leaving San Quentin State Prison. Freedom comes with urgent demands: find a place to live, get a job and clean up any bad habits acquired in or before jail—including dealing dope.

Mental Health Advocates Ask: "How Could They?"

Richmond Confidential

Julia Landau, class of 2012, writes in Richmond Confidential: A group of mental health advisors to Contra Costa County have condemned last week’s political attack on Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin as “cruel” and “bigoted,” and expressed dismay at the involvement of police and fire officials, who are often a first line of contact for people with mental illness who need help.

Learning Medicine the Cuban Way

East Bay Express

Cuba began educating American medical students after members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Fidel Castro in 2000. The result was an offer of 500 Americans to attend medical school in Cuba for free. Since then, 34 have graduated, and more than 160 are currently enrolled.

The Epicenter of a Public Health Crisis

East Bay Express

Nearly 3 million Americans are thought to be chronically infected with Hepatitis C, the country's leading cause of liver failure, accounting for about 12,000 deaths a year. Liver transplant lists are accumulating names at a startling rate, and donors can't keep up. Scant resources devoted to treating it are being slashed.