I missed this quote earlier, but fortunately, CalBuzz picked it up and ran with it:
Blunder #2: Whitman's call last week to build more prisons, to be paid for by cutting other programs. We saw the story, by Torey Van Oot in the Sacramento B Minus but didn't see any follow-up, which was odd, given what a huge strategic screw-up this was on Meg's part.
"Whitman, who opposes raising taxes and wants to reduce the state work force, declined to identify a specific funding source for the costly new facilities, saying instead that cash could be freed up by cutting other areas of government," Van Oot reported.
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Brown called Whitman's plan to build prisons while reducing spending "snake-oil math." Moreover, he said, "It is a gross misrepresentation to say you're going to cut taxes, you're going to somehow build more prisons and you're not going to cut (education and other) spending.
"When you build more prisons, that costs money, then you put people in it, that costs money, then you have to build more hospital beds ... it's gigantic." (CalBuzz)
So, Ms. Whitman, which is it? Increase prison spending? Increase the nation's largest prison size to event greater heights? Or properly fund our schools?
There has been a proposal floating around Sacramento that calls for the UC system, which has a plethora of really outstanding medical schools and associated hospitals, to take over prisoner healthcare. You know, that mess that has been under federal receivership for its unconstitutionality? Well, the Governor thinks, why not do a little Glee-style mashup between the UC hospitals (good) and the prison healthcare system (disaster)? Why not indeed?
University of California leaders made clear Thursday that they were not in a rush to embrace a controversial proposal for UC to provide healthcare for state prison inmates, with an emphasis on connecting doctors and patients remotely over the Internet.
The UC regents were scheduled to discuss the issue at a meeting in San Francisco but delayed it for at least two months, deciding to form a committee to study the plan and other options. "This is a very complicated issue, and we are going to have to spend a great deal of time to determine how and if the university is going to get involved," regents Chairman Russell S. Gould said at the meeting.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed having UC, with its prestigious medical schools, manage healthcare for prison inmates; a recent report by a consultant estimated that the change could save the state $12 billion over a decade. Besides the expansion of telemedicine, the plan calls for a special hospital for chronically ill inmates, reducing the need for overtime pay for prison guards for hospitalized patients. (LA Times)
In the end, what will probably end up happening is that there will be some advisory or small scale involvement between the UC and the prison healthcare system that will probably only make the situation more confusing.
But, if the UC deal does happen, and they do take over the health care systems, I think we may end up seeing crime sprees by the elderly and a rash of crimes from cancer victims. Heck, even with the healthcare reform bill, insurance ain't cheap.
I kidd of course. As it stands right now, the prison system basically holds on to sick prisoners and slowly watches them die. Until recently, resources were dangerously lacking. Much of that is changing with the receivership, as you would expect. But the pricetag of all this remains high.
After his outrageous opinion in Citizens United, freeing corporations to spend willy-nilly on politics, Justice Anthony Kennedy wasn't my favorite Justice. (Justice Breyer currently holds that title for his dissent in the Prop 8 trial youtube decision.) But, give the man credit for some honest talk at a forum at Pepperdine Law School. While Republicans in the state are, shall we say, going in another direction, he encourages some real soul searching on our penal system.
"California now has 185,000 people in prison at $32,500 a year" each, he said. He then urged voters and officials to compare that expense to what taxpayers spend per pupil in elementary schools.
"The three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers' union and that is sick!" Kennedy said of the measure mandating life sentences for third-time criminal offenders. (LA Times)
Also of note was his remark that American prison sentences are eight times longer than European sentences. You'll see with a casual glance at the statistics that the additional expenses for the sentences are not really an efficient use of resources.
One of Arnold Schwarzenegger's centerpiece proposals back in his State of the State address earlier this month was a constitutional amendment to ensure the state spends more on higher ed than prisons. It sounds like a pretty good idea in the abstract. Since the early 1980s, California has built dozens of prisons, but only 3 new UC and CSU campuses - even though the construction cost is about the same, and even though students bring money into the system and create value when they leave it, whereas prisoners suck up resources and generate no value.
So something that would take money from prisons and give it to higher ed sounds like a great idea, right? Not according to the Legislative Analyst's Office, which slammed the proposal as "an unnecessary, ill-conceived measure that would do serious harm to the budget process" and concludes "we recommend rejection of this proposal."
The budget odd couple left almost everyone scratching their heads, though on its face it's pretty simple: in four years time, there would be a cap on prison spending at 7% of the state's general fund and a corresponding floor for the UC and CSU systems, combined, of at least 10% of general fund revenues.
But that wouldn't be so simple because, as the LAO points out, about 9.5% of current GF revenues are going to prisons and only about 5.7% to UC/CSU.
To get to the magic numbers, the governor's proposal would require any cuts in prison spending - beginning next year - to be transferred dollar for dollar to higher ed. If that swap of cash doesn't get the UC/CSU piece of the pie up to 10% by July 2014, lawmakers would have to use "other available resources" to make up the difference.
It's worth noting that this setup procedure - cutting prison costs even beyond current levels and possibly forcing cuts in other programs to pay for the proposal - hasn't been widely talked about, and has been completely absent from any public mention of the plan by Governor Schwarzenegger.
In other words, the proposal would take money from prisons regardless of their actual spending needs, give it to higher ed but won't guarantee higher ed gets as much money as the mandate requires so other programs are dragged into this, and as Myers further explains, would exclude community colleges from getting the funds AND exempts operating costs of prisons built under the huge AB 900 bond from the cap on prison spending.
What this all reveals is that Arnold Schwarzenegger once again is trying to use a gimmick to avoid actually solving the underlying problems. Prison spending is high because our sentencing laws are ridiculous. Instead of ending the war on drugs and reconsidering Three Strikes, Arnold thinks the answer is to just cut prison spending by constitutional fiat and dump the money into higher ed.
And instead of finding a long-term revenue source to fund higher education and ensure lasting prosperity for California's future, he's basically proposing a poorly thought-out raid on another big segment of the state budget.
When it comes time to render a verdict on his terms in office, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be remembered as someone who talked a big game, but persistently refused to offer genuine solutions that matched the talk. Looks like it'll take our next governor to finally address the problems that Arnold let fester out of his own unwillingness to admit what needs to be done and to propose we actually do it.
The Governor spoke at the Sacramento Press Club yesterday and decided to use it as some sort of long-range brain storm session. Hey, why not build prisons in Mexico?
"We pay them to build a prison down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in the prison," he added. "Half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons. That is money, again, a billion dollars right there that can go into higher education. That is an example of one of the things we do that is unnecessary spending."
Schwarzenegger's idea had not been vetted. The Governor's Office was unable to answer, for instance, whether he would like to send all illegal immigrant prisoners to Mexico or just those who have Mexican citizenship. (SacBee)
You know, this sounds like a great idea. How about this, we find a huge island, ship ALL of our prisoners there, and forget about them. Hey, it worked for Australia, right? They're doing fine there. And if it doesn't work we have some great reality TV or movie scripts.
But, even if we are able to build a prison in Mexico, this doesn't come close to solving any of our current problems. We still would have to come up with the cash to build that prison, and then would have to set up a transfer process. And that doesn't even begin to factor the possibly huge legal expenses that we'd incur in trying to ship prisoners (especially non-Mexican prisoners) to Mexico.
Look, I'm all about brain storming, and frankly, he's had far worse ideas than this. But this is why we have offices (without tape recorders this time Arnold)). The underlying fact is that our prisons really can't wait for several years for some action, they need some answers now.
(Calitics will promote to the front page a reasonable number of candidate diaries that the Editorial Board believes communicate substantive policy positions of which the Calitics community should be aware - promoted by jsw)
Last week, Governor Schwarzenegger introduced his latest bad idea for solving our state's budget crisis: privatizing California's prison system.
Prisons must be managed with public safety, inmate welfare, and rehabilitation as top priorities -- not maximizing corporate profits. What's more, we can't facilitate the creation of new powerful corporations with the financial incentive to lobby for the imprisonment of more and more residents of our state.
Turning over control of some or all of California's prisons to private corporations would be a disaster for California -- and we can't let it happen.
So I've launched a new petition -- on Facebook and also on my campaign website -- to spread the word and build opposition to Governor Schwarzenegger's privatization proposal. I hope you'll take a minute to join me, urging the governor and your legislators not to privatize California's prisons.
Yesterday, in his State of the State speech, the Governor endorsed a constitutional amendment that would require the state to spend more money on higher education than it does on prisons. A nice idea, and one that would likely have the support of most progressives.
"Thirty years ago 10 percent of the general fund went to higher education and 3 percent went to prisons" Schwarzenegger said. "Today almost 11 percent goes to prisons and only 7½ percent goes to higher education. Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future."
Schwarzenegger wants a constitutional amendment to prevent California lawmakers from ever spending more on prisons than on higher education. But California already spends more on education than on anything else. (KPCC)
But it's more complicated than that, isn't it. And of course, there's this, the hubris of the legislature:
"Every legislator would tell you that they value higher education more than they do prison spending," Hollingsworth remarked. "The fact is we would be spending a lot less on the prisons than the university system if we had our own control over it."
That would be really nice, if it were remotely true. Up until this point, the Legislature has shown no willingness to break from the failing policies of the past that have given us a 70% recidivism rate, spiraling costs, and an increasingly dangerous prisons environment. The court decisions haven't been in effect for all that long, in the grand scheme of things. The decisions that brought us to this point were made over decades, and blaming the courts is a cheap political move. A throwaway line, really.
Interests
Now, you can't really consider the costs of the prison system without looking at CCPOA. The prison guards' union does have vastly different goals to either the governor, the legislature or the people. Of course, when Arnold speaks of taking the prison system private, that is who he is targeting. From my perspective, I deeply believe in the rights of workers to unionize and to bargain collectively. And given the conditions at a typical prison in the state, the protections a union offers are important. But their goals are simple: more prison guard hours. That means more overtime, more guards, and when following the logic: more prisoners.
But the problem with privatizing the prisons is a similar one: the more prisoners, the more profits for the privately held prisons. It is essentially the same motive that CCPOA has, but this time they have Wall Street looking over their backs. I'm not sure that is really the answer either.
The real solution to this mess requires an incredibly courageous stand by a few critical elected officials that are willing to prioritize policy over politics. Don't laugh, it's possible. Only then can we follow states like Kansas, yes Kansas, in rethinking how our prisons can and should work.
Priorities
This is, as the Governor pointed out yesterday, all about our priorities. When the Governor stands up and says that we will not cut education, he is saying something about CalWORKS as well. And IHSS. And CalGrants. You get the point. It is critical that we protect education, of course. But when the problem is a pot that is too small, you don't solve the problem by saying that you will not skim any liquid off and focus on the carrots floating on the top. No, you look for a bigger pot.
Well, options are nearly up in the prison litigation, so the Schwarzenegger administration and the state legal krew (ie Jerry Brown's firm) are now begging the Supreme Court to muscle up against the 9th Circuit prison litigation panel.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has made one last plea to the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the legality of a federal court's unprecedented order requiring California to shed nearly 40,000 inmates from its prison system over the next two years.
In court papers filed Tuesday night, state officials urged the Supreme Court to intervene in the case, following up on an appeal filed this past fall seeking to overturn a three-judge panel's orders requiring swift action to relieve prison overcrowding. The Supreme Court will consider the request at its Jan. 15 conference. (SJ Merc)
So, in theory, we should know a lot more when the Court announces its next batch of writs of certiorari. If the Court denies cert, we pretty much know what happens. The Schwarzenegger "Plan B" goes into effect, and the release process is substantially sped up. If the Court accepts the case, expect the legal fight to drag on for another few years.
Lawyers for California's sick inmates said Monday they like the Schwarzenegger administration's plan for reducing the prison population and urged a three-judge federal panel to let state officials decide what methods to use.
The plan calls for a reduction in the population of 33 adult prisons to 137.5 percent of design capacity within two years, thus meeting the requirement of the panel's Aug. 4 order.
"Rather than ordering the state to utilize particular population reduction methods, the court should leave to the state the discretion and flexibility to choose which methods it uses to accomplish the reduction," the inmates' attorneys said in their response to the plan.(SacBee)
The fact that the inmates' attorneys signed off on this plan saves a lot of drama, but not all that much in actual litigation. The Administration still plans on appealing this decision even if their Plan B is approved, as they want to go back to Plan A. The decision would need to go to the 9th Circuit, and if necessary, to the Supreme Court.
What is clear, however, is that we simply can't build our way out of the prison crisis. We need to find ways to reduce recidivism by putting back the "Rehabilitation" in CA Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation in more than name.
(This originally appeared in Capitol Weekly last week, but I thought it was worth reproducing here. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
The Legislature finally broke through nearly impassable political barriers and in September enacted a set of evidence-based reforms to California's correctional system. These reforms make common-sense revisions, like updating some property crime thresholds to reflect the cost of living, many of which had not been changed since 1982. They refocus parole to apply limited resources on higher-risk offenders, and will improve how parolees are supervised, including the use of a "Parole Reentry Court" for parolees with substance abuse or mental illness histories. Prison credit laws have been retooled to create incentives for inmates to follow prison rules and programs.
Legislation enacted this year will launch an innovative system of performance-based funding for supervising adult felony probationers. About 40 percent of new prison admissions are offenders who failed felony probation. SB 678 (Leno - Benoit) provides a formula for sharing state savings with probation when those savings are achieved because of reduced prison admissions attributable to better felony probation outcomes.
While immensely worthwhile, these reforms will not be enough to achieve the savings and public safety improvements California needs. (EDIT by Brian: There's more over the flip...)
I was going to include this in the other prison diary, but it got a bit bogged down. But this is a key point for the counties: The county prisons are also overcrowded.
In fact, Asm. Mike Davis brought a bill that passed the Assembly before getting bogged down in the Senate, AB 1369, that would have allowed additional flexibility for county jails.
AB 1369 would allow the Sheriff, upon approval by the Board of Supervisors of that County, to place on electronic home monitoring those inmates sentenced to low level felonies, if found eligible under current law. The bill would also impose a penalty for the escape or attempted escape of someone who is placed on involuntary home electronic monitoring. Under current law, there is a punishment for the escape or attempted escape of someone on voluntary home electronic monitoring, which is an oversight.
"Based on the lack of space in the county jail system, a Federal Court has placed a mandatory cap on the number of inmates in the system. To adhere to the cap, the Sheriff's department has reduced the percentage of time served by inmates committed to county facilities," said Assemblyman Mike Davis (D-Los Angeles), author of AB 1369. (Davis Press release)
So, in other words, we're shifting the problem from the state prisons, which admittedly have quite the doozy of a disaster on their hands, to the county jails, which only have a major headache. But, adding these additional prisoners to the county systems should level out the problems, I suppose. We'll have equally messed up prison systems at the county and state level.
Another point on this is that may not be so apparent from the judges' perspective, but will be noticeable to the counties: budget impacts. The counties will now be responsible for housing a lot more prisoners under the plan. Even with the state paying back a portion of the raid on local government funds, the counties are struggling to provide the services they are mandated to do already, adding on some additional prisoners will hardly be welcome news for those Board of Supervisor Budget Committee meetings
Last we heard from the prison situation, the three judge panel had told the state to do better than their plan to reduce the population by 27,000. Yesterday, the administration presented a plan to release the 40,000+ that the court had ordered, including some methods that the Legislature has previously rejected.
The Schwarzenegger administration bowed to a federal court order Thursday and submitted a plan to reduce California's prison population by more than 40,000 in two years, largely by sending fewer people to prison for relatively minor crimes and parole violations.
Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate complied with the Thursday deadline set by a three-judge panel in San Francisco, while insisting that the court had no authority to order the population-reduction plan or to issue additional decrees necessary to make it work. The state has already served notice of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The plan includes several of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposals that the Legislature has already rejected: allowing some elderly or ailing prisoners to finish their sentences in local custody or home confinement; sending criminals to county jail instead of prison for crimes such as drug possession, receiving stolen property and writing bad checks; and raising the threshold for felony grand theft from $400 to $950.(SF Chronicle 11/13/09)
In theory, the Legislature has to approve some of these measures. Depending on how the bill is presented, it could only need a majority. Which is good, because it seems highly unlikely that any Republicans would actually vote for raising the threshold for grand theft or reducing punishments on drug crimes as the plan calls for.
And right on cue, Jim Nielsen talks tough:
Plans to send fewer people to prison, such as the change in the threshold for grand theft, are "an egregious compromise of justice," said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County). He said the state needs to build more prisons. (SF Chronicle)
Of course, we could build and build and build, but unless we address the underlying cause of the problem, the revolving door of recidivism, we aren't going to build our way out of the problem. Ignoring the fact that we don't have the money to build the prisons, the fact that warehousing a substantial portion of the poor male demographic doesn't create less criminality is the problem. Sen. Mark Leno points out solutions that are actually, you know, solutions, such as revising sentencing guidelines.
While it always kind of shocks me to write this, California needs to look to states like Kansas to find ways to reform our prison system. We need to change the focus of our prisons from simple punishment and warehousing into a broad focus on rehabilitation and getting these people back into productive society. If we give up on these people, it is only the state that stands to lose as we pay $40,000 per yer to house each of these inmates.
I listed a few ways to reduce the budget deficit earlier this morning, but one thing I didn't mention was the way Illinois is now reducing the budget deficit: reducing prison populations:
Gov. Pat Quinn tried to allay concerns Tuesday about the state releasing prisoners early to save money by stressing that the inmates being let go will be electronically monitored and had not been violent offenders.
In the coming weeks, about 1,000 prisoners will be released -- some up to a year early -- because of the state's financial troubles.
"We're going to do this because we do have financial challenges, but at the same time we're going to do it in a way that always protects the public," Quinn said. (Chicago Tribune 11/10/2009)
If you read the whole article, the interesting thing about this was that Illinois already pays A LOT less per prisoner than California does. Illinois is at about $5K per prisoner, we're at $45,000 per year. Our prison system is in need of some serious repair, and the overcrowding makes it costlier to manage.
Of course, we're going to have to release some prisoners at some point. While the state is battling it out with the federal courts, the end result is at least partially known. Within a few years, the state has committed to reducing prison population by at least 27,000. Of course, that falls short of the federal court's request of 44,000, so litigation will continue on for a while.
But do the math on that for a second. Even if we only go down by that 27,000 figure, that is 1.2 billion dollars per year.
(Consistent with our policy of bumping elected officials, here is a post from SF DA Kamala Harris. Disclosure: I am doing some work for her campaign for Attorney General. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. By that measure, our current approach to criminal justice may need a shrink--and a new way of doing business.
The old approach to fighting crime is well-known. Police and prosecutors are deluged with low-level drug cases, and the public spends billions on prisons to house these offenders. And, every year, prisons release hundreds of thousands of these offenders back into our communities. They're sent back with a bus ticket and a little cash in hand--and that's about it. They have no plan, no skills, nowhere to go, and no other changed circumstances. They pick up right where they left off; within three years of release, seven out of ten California prisoners will re-offend and return to prison.
After decades of this sad cycle, our prisons are swollen beyond capacity and our budgets maxed. Across the country, leaders are acknowledging that we've been missing a crucial opportunity all along. Perhaps the most crucial step in the criminal justice process is the most often ignored--what happens after the conviction and prison sentence, when the prisoner comes home.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that the Governor was bringing his so-called "prison solution" to the three judge panel. Yesterday the judges said, try again:
A federal court on Wednesday rejected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to solve California's prison overcrowding crisis, giving the state three weeks to devise an alternative or risk an order that seizes control of how more than 40,000 inmates are released from the prison system over the next two years.
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"This court is unaware of any excuse for the state's failure to comply," the judges wrote in Wednesday's order. "We will view with the utmost seriousness any further failure to comply with our orders."
Prisoner rights lawyers say if the state doesn't come up with a new plan in 21 days, they will.
"They gave them one more chance," said Donald Specter, head of the Prison Law Office. "We think we can come up with a plan that is safe and meets the court's order." (CoCo Times)
Oh yay, more legislative wrangling on prison issues. That'll turn out fantastically, I'm sure.
Major policy changes often happen as a result of a sudden shift that is, in fact, not so sudden at all. Public attitudes and behavior steadily change over time, but a political system whose practitioners have made up their minds on a topic years ago, before that change became apparent, are typically unwilling to accept the new reality. Until something changes - a new generation of leaders takes power, a financial crisis causes people to become more open to new ideas. Or perhaps it's just as simple as an idea whose time has come, an idea whose wisdom can no longer be denied.
We're at such a turning point with marijuana. One of the state's main cash crops, the economic base of many small towns in the North Coast (and of a growing but hard to track number of metropolitan households), marijuana is already widely available in California, whether on the black market or at a quasi-legal dispensary. As more and more Californians are comfortable with the use of marijuana, even if they do not partake of it themselves, the decades-old drug war has become seen as more and more absurd when it comes to marijuana.
When an April Field Poll found 56% of Californians back marijuana legalization, it became only a matter of time before the topic became a fully mainstream subject, deemed appropriate for "serious" conversation at everything from public policy summits to the dinner table.
And so this week California is witnessing a fundamental shift in marijuana policy, where for perhaps the first time it really is a question of "when," and not "if," the sale and use of marijuana will become legal in California.
The biggest news comes from the federal government, where Attorney General Eric Holder has followed through on his early signals and announced the Justice Department will no longer prosecute people for using medical marijuana in accordance with their state's laws. Holder is not yet embracing full legalization, of course. But this is a significant shift that recognizes states do have a right to innovate when it comes to drug policy. Whether the Obama Administration intends it or not, the new policy will be further evidence that a strict federal "War on Drugs" is no longer desirable or viable.
Here in California, more fundamental changes are under way. As a judge rules LA DA Steve Cooley's attack on dispensaries to be invalid, the movement for full legalization is well under way. Tom Ammiano's bill to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana, AB 390, will get its first hearing in the Assembly next week.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking at a bill signing ceremony in Merced yesterday, said he is "basically opposed" to legalization but believes it's time to have a debate about the issue. In Arnold-speak that says he doesn't see legalization as a political loser, even if he's not quite willing to go there himself. His comments show that legalization has gone from being a sensible idea on the fringes of our political discourse to something we can debate as easily and naturally as, say, water policy.
Meanwhile, armed with the Field Poll results - as well as the recent Gallup Poll which found support for legalization was highest in the Western US, with moderates and independents nationwide about split on the matter, California activists are not waiting around for the legislature or the governor to act.
Instead they're going directly to the ballot. TaxCannabis.org is the headquarters for the effort to put an initiative on the November 2010 ballot to treat marijuana much like alcohol. The initiative would legalize possession of up to one ounce for all adults over 21, and give local governments the ability to determine whether to more broadly legalize and tax marijuana themselves. It would essentially create a "local option" instead of a statewide free-for-all.
It's not yet clear if they have the money or the volunteers to put this on the ballot. And the fact that local governments would be the ones implementing the policy, instead of a single statewide standard, might limit the savings in prison spending and the overall tax revenues created. But it's a clear step forward for sensible drug policy, one whose time has clearly come.
Let's sum up the prison situation as it stands as quickly as possible. A federal court panel of three judges has ruled that the state must reduce its prison population by 44,000. The Governor's current plan gets nowhere near that goal, and the deadline has passed.
Generally, courts don't take well to being blown off. And attorneys for the inmates know these sorts of things:
The inmates have said prison overcrowding violates their rights to adequate medical and mental health care. Their lawyers told the federal judges that the state had shown "utter contempt" for the judges' orders. They said state prison officials "are no more above the law than those in their custody," and should not be allowed to choose which laws and court orders to follow and which to "simply ignore." (LA Times 10/09/09)
The judges should hold the entire Republican party in contempt, and truthfully, many of the Democratic legislators who were too scared of the CCPOA to do anything should be included in that list too.
Back in March, New Mexico abolished the death penalty. The words that Gov. Richardson used then still resonate:
"I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime," Richardson said. "If the State is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong." (NM Independent 3/18/09)
And ultimately, that is the question with the death penalty. Do we trust our criminal justice system enough to give it the ability to kill? Is it really worth it to kill an innocent man or two for the retribution against those who are guilty?
These are, of course, moral decisions. The irony of it is that many of those are so concerned with a "culture of life" are those who are the biggest supporters of the death penalty. I suppose it is easier if you see the issue as black and white. Good and evil. These are just bad people we are putting to death. But all too frequently, they are innoncent people. For example, see the Texas case of Todd Willingham profiled recently in the New Yorker and on Nightline. Just watch this video, and tell me whether you would trust this prosecutor (now judge) to be involved in such a decision.
What good does an apology do to a man you have now killed?
In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez's approach seemed to deny "rational reasoning" and was more "characteristic of mystics or psychics." What's more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, "not only the standards of today but even of the time period." The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the "execution of a legally and factually innocent person." ([New Yorker 9/17/09 In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez's approach seemed to deny "rational reasoning" and was more "characteristic of mystics or psychics." What's more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, "not only the standards of today but even of the time period." The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the "execution of a legally and factually innocent person."])
Beyond the risk of executing an innocent person, there is also the fact that the death penalty does not actually reduce the rate of murders in the jurisdictions that have them. Since 1990, the murder rate has been consistently lower in states that do not have the death penalty. In this decade, it's hovering over 40% percent lower. Violence begets only more violence, not peace.
Once you tear away the deterrence rationale, the death penalty is exposed as merely an act of retribution. An act of violence that has no place in modern society.
The argument against the death penalty extends beyond the sheer morals of it. But California has had a moratorium on the death penalty process for years, you say? Well, that is absolutely correct. But, still the process of sentencing people to death continues. And it will not be so long until we once again see executions. It is only a matter of time. And as we wait, we spend money that could be going to educating at-risk youth, or providing educational training, or even something as silly as higher education. We are spending money on the death penalty almost in an effort to spite ourselves, and we are succeeding in cutting off our nose.
The argument goes, like everything in California, back to the budget. Former Attorney General, and LA District Attorney, also more recently served on the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. He came away from the experience more convinced than ever that the death penalty must go. And, he said so in the LA Times in June, citing the budget crisis:
According to the final report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, which I chaired from 2006 to 2008, the cost of a murder trial goes up by about half a million dollars if prosecutors seek the death penalty. Confinement on death row (with all the attendant security requirements) adds $90,000 per inmate per year to the normal cost of incarceration. Appeals and habeas corpus proceedings add tens of thousands more. In all, it costs $125 million a year more to prosecute and defend death penalty cases and to keep inmates on death row than it would simply to put all those people in prison for life without parole.
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It's time to convert the sentences of those now on death row to life without parole. Doing so would incapacitate some of the worst of the worst for their natural lives, and at the same time ensure that a person wrongfully convicted will not be executed. And it would save $125 million each year.
A courageous governor facing an unprecedented budget crisis would take this step and use the taxpayer money saved to preserve some of the vital services now on the chopping block. (LA Times 9/30/09)
Every year, we spend money that we could be using to actually prevent crimes on the death penalty, with nothing to actually show for it. How much longer before we come to our senses and simply end the death penalty?
As we drift headlong into the 2010 Governor's race, there are some very big issues facing the state. One of these, is the prison crisis. The legislature and the Governor were only able to come up with cuts that would reduce the population by somewhere in the 25,000 range, while the federal courts are looking more in the 44,000 range.
The Bee took a look at how the candidates are talking about this issue, and let's just say that some of the positions are semi-reasonable, and others simply aren't. Now, for those of you who were wondering about the Michael Jackson "Black or White" Video, well, I give you Steve Poizner's black or white take on the world:
Whitman and Poizner, on the other hand, have tried to out-tough each other, railing against legislation passed last month by the state Senate that would have let some inmates out earlier and appointed a commission to rework state sentencing laws. The ultimate version of the bill passed this month did not include the sentencing commission or a provision to release more than 6,000 inmates to home detention.
"You have to be a really bad person to get into state prison," Poizner said. "So I'm opposed to releasing people who are dangerous, absolutely opposed. That's no way to balance the budget."
Whitman went even further, saying she opposed rewriting any prison and parole guidelines that would shorten prison terms for any inmate.(Sac Bee 9/23/09emphasis mine)
Poizner simply takes the reactionary view, that is, that if you are in prison, you are a bad, bad, person. Of course, this ignores the crazy, messed up world of parole violations that lead to people going to prison to serve out a term because they missed a meeting with their parole officer or some other technicality. So, yes, you have to break the law to end up in prison, but painting all prisoners with such a wide brush serves neither the prison system, the prisoners, nor the state very well.
And then you look at eMeg's statement, and that seems all the more bizarre when you put it together with her statement from yesterday saying that she wants to can 40,000 state workers. As the governor's staff has pointed out, you can't fire that many workers without firing a bunch of prison guards. And if you plan on increasing the prison population as eMeg seems to be saying here, well forget about cutting state employee roles, you'll end up hiring another 10,000 prison guards. And that doesn't even consider the overtime pay that the guards get in spades.
Jerry Brown, who mentioned that he would consider the position, and SF Mayor Gavin Newsom have stated fairly similar positions. Both want to reduce recidivism (good!) but haven't stated whether they would support a sentencing commission or any serious reform (bad!).
On the other hand, Republican Tom Campbell has actually been quite the reasonable guy on this front. He supported the Senate bill (Good!) and has put out specific, pragmatic policies on this and some other issues, many of which are pretty vanilla milquetoast. Nonetheless, a candidate that is willing to talk about the issue from a logical viewpoint, rather than an emotional reactionary viewpoint, deserves some credit.
Campbell, on the other hand, is bucking the prevailing wisdom in his party. He backed both the Senate version and the final bill although both shorten prison terms of some inmates.
"We have an opportunity to direct a more effective prison system," Campbell said. "I'd rather approach this pragmatically, through outsourcing of prisoners, developing a triage of parole violators and focusing on more violent offenders in prisons."
Now, Arnold supported the Senate bill too, and that hardly makes him a great Governor, does it? But, unless our elected leaders are willing to deal with thhis issue out of a place of pragmatic, problem-solving leadership, rather than out of fear of an electoral backlash, we shouldn't expect too much progress.
Timm Herdt was on a conference call yesterday with a top official from the Department of Corrections, and that official acknowledged that the plan due to federal judges by midnight today on prison reduction will not meet the goal:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday will submit to a panel of three federal judges a plan that would reduce the inmate population at California's overcrowded prisons by substantially less than what the court has ordered, a move that a top prison administrator acknowledged will place state officials at risk of being held in contempt.
Although the final plan will not be submitted until late Friday, administration officials have briefed other parties involved in the court proceedings on its major elements. They said exact projections of how much the prison population will be reduced have not yet been calculated, but the reduction would not lower the population to the court's standard of 137.5 percent of the prison system's design capacity.
"This plan will not meet the court's requirements," said Lee Seale, deputy chief of staff of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in a conference call Wednesday with legislative staff members. "I certainly don't think this panel will be thrilled by this plan. I think we recognize we may be held in contempt."
Under the plan the state will submit, they will get to around 27,000 prisoner reduction. The judges want something close to 44,000.
The question is how the three-judge panel will react. They may mandate a release of enough prisoners to get to that number, at which point the state will challenge the ruling and throw it to the US Supreme Court. This is precisely was Tough on Crime member emeritus George Runner wants.
Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, who has intervened in the court case in the hope of preventing a judicial mandate to lower the prison population, believes the administration is taking exactly the right approach.
"I would like to see the state plan be as easily rejected as possible," Runner said.
If the administration submitted a plan that came close to meeting the court's order, Runner said, that could lead to a negotiated compromise. This way, he said, the court will be forced to propose its own plan - one that would set up a showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Where Runner would pitch the "I'm right because I say so" defense. And with this Supreme Court, who knows, that may work.
We don't know when the appeal would come in the process. The Governor's office seem to think that they can appeal the initial ruling as soon as they offer their alternative plan, while others believe that they'd have to wait for the three-judge panel to issue a final order with the full reductions. At some point, everyone agrees, an appeal is allowable. Kevin Yamamura has more.
I don't want to put this entirely on the Governor, though he's clearly dragging his feet. The Assembly forced the weak proposal you'll see from the Governor today by scaling back the reform plan that would have come closer to the judge's goal of reducing the population by 44,000 prisoners. But the Governor didn't actually have to follow the Assembly in submitting their plan. They could have come up with one of their own making, putting pressure on the Legislature to conform it. They chose not to stand behind their own plan and do so. So while there's plenty of blame to go around, I think the Governor needs to own this one, although he and everyone else want to take the blame off themselves.
By the end of the week, it will be apparent what all the posturing accomplished: nothing. That may suit lawmakers just fine -- they can blame the coming prison reforms on the federal courts rather than taking heat from voters for being insufficiently hard on criminals. But the episode is further evidence that if California's prison system is a national disgrace, its Legislature is a national laughingstock.
Perhaps it's not surprising that, in this environment, Schwarzenegger seems to be taking on the characteristics of a dictator. On Tuesday, he rejected the Legislature's plan to promote renewable energy and said he'd impose his own by executive fiat. He's on surer legal ground when it comes to the prisons because his actions will be backed by the federal court. But it's dismaying to watch the state's democratic procedures break down so thoroughly.
As long as he now appears to be king of California, we humbly beseech our lord and Terminator to finally do the right thing by the prisons. His proposal to the court should be modeled on the one approved by the Senate and include a commission to review the unsustainable determinate sentencing system. Meanwhile, it's time to drop the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of the federal court order so we can get on with the business of fixing the prisons and out of the habit of defending the indefensible.
But that's not going to happen. Seeing the Department of Corrections reduce the very rehabilitation programs by $250 million, that even the Assembly plan used as a means to let inmates out for completing them, show how the mission of corrections has been completely lost in this. What the state is fighting by appealing the judge's order is their privilege to let people die in jail needlessly in violation of the Constitution. Today, they will continue to assert that privilege.
The real solution to this mess requires an incredibly courageous stand by a few critical elected officials that are willing to prioritize policy over politics. Don't laugh, it's possible. Only then can we follow states like Kansas,