Black or White: Prisons and the Next Governor

Really bad people? (5.00 / 1)

Who is Poizner kidding?  Does he have any idea about whom he is speaking?

This state needs to stop sending so many people to prison in the first place.  There was a piece in the New Yorker within the last couple of weeks about a man in Texas who was executed for an arson murder.  It is now widely agreed that he was factually innocent.  Just because we don't speak with Texas accents does not mean that doesn't happen here.

Our prosecutors all assume, without question, that the police presenting a case have not made any mistakes and are not lying.  The Public Defenders and most private attorneys adopt the same assumptions and try to get the accused to plead out as quickly as possible.  Indeed, most defense counsel suffer from Stockholm Syndrome according to a psychologist who has observed the system in action.  Our judges are all afraid that someone will accuse them of being "soft" on crime and, therefore, bend over backwards to please the prosecution.

This past Monday, a fellow named Lister had the murder case against him dismissed after he had spent 26 years in prison.  It is fairly clear that he did not commit the crime and that the evidence against him was manufactured by the police.

California has the worst justice system of the major states.  Our Supreme Court upholds virtually all death verdicts.  The appellate courts bend over backwards to invalidate laws designed to protect the accused.

Somewhere around 3% to 5% of defendants are actually innocent.  Probably around one-third are charged with greater crimes than the crime actually committed.  The entire system leans on these folks, most of whom are not well-educated and not particularly sophisitcated, to plead out.  Rather than focus on the back end, we should focus on the front end.

The ruined lives of the criminal justice system cost us a fortune.

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by: Doll @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 15:05:49 PM CDT

the prison bill isn't signed yet (0.00 / 0)

so it's wait and see.

you'll see me over at dailykos also

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by: change the Be @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 16:23:13 PM CDT

Prisons, Prisoners, and Prison Reform (0.00 / 0)

The issues and how to handle them are at a place the general public doesn't seem to want look.

What are the reasons that so many, coming out of prison, fail to make it and end up back inside? The one place no one seems to want to look is at the support systems and programs or the lack of them that make it possible for parolees to readjust to living in a world where they make their own choices.

First, it seems to me that after sitting in local courts and listening to probation/"joint suspended" conditions of probation, over and over, one of the conditions is always that the probationer find a job and be gainfully employed. I believe that conditions of parole are even more stringent. Right now, supposing the federal government mandates that the 40,000 are released, where will those 40,000 find jobs, especially considering that many (2/3?, 3/4?) will have educational deficiencies. Depending on type of offenses, there will be many jobs they cannot even apply for. They will be competing with other already unemployed and looking for work Californians in a very tight market. So, then what? What are their real chances of success? 

Second, there is the issue of where they will live. Not all (half maybe) may not, for whatever reasons be able to come out and live with family or even former friends (especially if the former friend also has a record) so we can look at 20 plus thousand more people who are homeless. What will they do? It is against the law, some way or another, to be "homeless" "vagrant" and so on. I mean, imagine what it would be like if just 25% of the half of those released were to arrive at Loaves and Fishes and the Salvation Army Shelter here in Sacramento! Resources already stretched thin might reach a saturation point.

Training, well, what training? How many would be able to manage retraining and the discipline of school even if they were part of the number that could return to family or friends? What jobs would they train for when there are no jobs?

Then there are the emotional issues, and relearning to effectively handle life in situations where everything is a decision, so where are the support groups for readjustment?

I wonder how many recidivists are 'guilty' of doing something, anything unconsciously consciously to go back just because of despair and stress, because there was/is no way to break the cycle: no support, no education, no job, no hope, and inside it is easier, and odd as it may sound, there is a certain security to knowing what the rules are, who and what the routine is and what the day to day will be, and having it all out of their uncertain hands? According to http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/06/why_do_we_toler.html there is a 70% recidivism rate. We Californians need to look at real ways to change that.

UC Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Simon, in this article says, among other things:

The most important thing we can do is use the penal code to set firmer limits on who can be sent to prison, as opposed to being dealt with through jail or probation at the county level. Currently our law gives county-level prosecutors huge discretion to select charges that will send local criminals to state prison, where the state pays all of the costs of incarceration. This has the terrible result of producing an ever-growing state prison population and an ever-growing group of people who, having been in a California prison, are deemed permanently dangerous.

Prison should be reserved for those who pose such a threat of violence that they cannot reasonably be worked with in the community. We should actively subsidize counties (as we did in the 1970s) to keep more of their offenders in the county system — where they can remain better integrated into the families and community resources they will eventually need to engage with in order to stay crime free.

Beyond that, we need to revamp some of the institutions that are routinely directing people into the criminal-justice system. This is especially true of our schools, which have become gateways to criminal-justice custody through disciplinary regimes and test-based pressures to force out weaker students. Another example is our mental health system, which has been allowed to atrophy, leaving many of the untreated mentally ill on a pathway toward criminalization and incarceration. A renewed and reformed mental health system could reduce both violence and mass imprisonment in the United States.

California has a nice "prison industry" going, to the tune of $15 billion a year and until there is some system that actually works toward honest rehabilitation along with punishment for doing what are mostly dumb things, nothing is going to change. Most crimes, murder, sexual assaults, mayhem being the exceptions, really are about doing dumb things and making really dumb choices.

Prison Cost

CALIFORNIA PRISONS

Population: California has 33 adult prisons, housing 173,000 inmates. The prisons were designed to hold 81,000. Capacity: The state expects to run out of room for new prisoners by June. Budget: The corrections budget for 2006-07 is $8.75 billion. That is 8.6 percent of the state's $101 billion general fund budget. Cost: The state spends an average of $34,000 per year to incarcerate a single adult prisoner. Medical and mental health problems may increase the cost of housing some prisoners. Employees: The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has 56,500 workers, 34,000 of whom are represented by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Medical care: Alarmed by the poor level of medical care for inmates, a federal judge earlier this year appointed a receiver to overhaul the prison medical system. SOURCES: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the state Department of Finance. Eight separate prisons – five public, three private – crowd the east side of the town, employing some 4,100 people. Arizona's death row is here, next to a desert wash. So is a federal prison for illegal immigrants. Nashville-based Corrections Corp. opened its medium-security Florence Correctional Center in 1999. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20061119-9999-1n19ariz.html

Education Cost http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Articles/article.asp?title=California%20comparison

Per-Pupil Expenditures

Perhaps the most salient measure of a state’s effort is how much it spends per pupil. California remains below the national average in per-pupil expenditures, ranking 29th in 2005–06, according to the National Education Association (NEA) Rankings & Estimates 2006–07. At $8,486, California was at 93% of the national average and ranked in the middle of the five most populous states.

Prison guards make more than teachers.

Average beginning teacher salary: $35,506

Guard Salaries

On average, twice that: http://www.sacbee.com/editorials/story/1305330.html

There is something skewed about this, this system that seems bent on maintaining job security for the prison industry rather than doing something to rehabilitate after punishment. There is something very wrong with a system willing to spend $35,000 a year to imprison people, and $8,500 to educate K-12 students.

I have searched, and cannot find any dollar amount per prisoner for the cost of re-entry programs, and much seems to be laid on the doorstep of the faith-based programs. However I did find this: http://nicic.org/Downloads/PDF/Library/period318.pdf  

There has to be something better than having the system we have now, and some way to effectively turn lives around. What we have now isn't working, and a current 70% recidivism rate is in effect a life sentence for nearly everything.

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by: sharra_r @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 20:26:12 PM CDT