Civil Rights Corps Challenges Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Over Illegal Consulting Contract Award
LA County illegally awarded the redesign of the county’s pretrial services to consulting giant Accenture.
Los Angeles, CA – On Monday, March 11th, the national legal organization Civil Rights Corps, which has successfully sued to strike down illegal cash bail policies in Los Angeles County, sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors alerting the Board to the illegality of a secretive $8.6 million sole-source contract for the redesign of pretrial services to consulting giant Accenture.
The illegal contract threatens to undermine years of progress around alternatives to incarceration made by a collaboration of Los Angeles community leaders, organizations and County departments. Additionally, Accenture has deep ties to authoritarian foreign governments, the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, ICE and others, with whom it has expanded the carceral industry through surveillance technology, predictive policing, and “smart” prisons across the world.
Of the impact of Accenture’s contract, Matyos Kidane, organizer with StopLAPDSpying, said, “This is another example of the County expanding its surveillance arsenal despite continued community calls to dismantle the carceral systems that employ these tools.”
Accenture’s advisory board for the LA pretrial services project consists of pro-incarceration profiteers from around the U.S. and the world, a clear conflict of interest. These corporations are recommending “alternatives” like electronic monitoring and risk-assessment algorithms, many of which were specifically rejected by local community and government experts prior to the sole-source contract. This board threatens to reverse voters’ clear mandate for decarceration efforts across the county and contradicts the County’s own stated vision over the past five years. But it stands to be a huge boon to the big companies who profit from increased surveillance contracts that will flow from Accenture’s decisions under the contract.
In the letter, Civil Rights Corps identified numerous ways in which the Accenture contract far exceeded the contracting authority of the County bureaucrats who pushed for it in secret.
Of the illegal pretrial services procurement, Civil Rights Corps CEO Danielle Dupuy-Watson said, “Accenture is a multi-billion dollar international company tied to corrupt police interests whose inputAngelenos do NOT need or want. We have to start asking: what’s the real purpose of this contract? Why would LA County break the law to usher in an astronomically priced contract that duplicates what was already done? There are really only two possible answers to that question: 1) incompetence 2) it benefits decision makers in ways that are purposely being kept from the public.”
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About Civil Rights Corps: Civil Rights Corps is a non-profit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system through innovative civil rights litigation. CRC works with individuals accused and convicted of crimes, their families and communities, people currently or formerly incarcerated, activists, organizers, judges, and government officials to challenge mass human caging and to create a legal system that promotes equality and human freedom.
Website: civilrightscorps.org
About The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition: The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is a community organization founded in 2011. The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition works to build community power toward abolishing police surveillance.
Media contacts:
Cheryl Bonacci, Civil Rights Corps | cheryl@civilrightscorps.org