When I wrote regularly for Calitics, the progressive blog for California politics, I took a particular interest in the prison crisis, which has reached epidemic proportions in the Golden State. The health care system has already been taken over by a federal receiver because it violated the prisoners' Constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment, with at least one prisoner dying each week from medical neglect. The entire system, which fits 170,000 convicts into jails with 100,000 beds, may get taken over by the courts as well. Severe overcrowding, cutbacks to rehabilitation and treatment programs, and an insane parole policy which sends 2/3 of all recidivists back to jail for technical parole violations have contributed to the problem. As has the pervasive "tough on crime" stance from the political leadership of both parties, which has yet to be contrasted with any kind of progressive message on how to fight crime smartly and safely, at lower cost and with corresponding lower incarceration and crime rates.
Here are a few stories that all happened within the past 24 hours in California, regarding these matters: (over)
Despite the assumed end to the prison crisis, there's still no bill to clarify the $1.2 billion dollars in savings assumed from cuts in the July budget. The Assembly passed a bill that fell $200 million dollars short and had almost no prison reform in it (some parole reform, but no prison reform), and the Senate has yet to take that bill up. After word yesterday that the Senate would do so, Darrell Steinberg backed away from it, seeking to give more time to the Assembly to add more reform and more cuts into the bill. Because the bill only requires a majority vote, it takes effect 90 days after passage. Which means that every day with no bill costs the state $3.3 million dollars. This is the consequence of so-called fiscal conservatives in the Yacht Party, as well as their higher-office-seeking bretheren in the Assembly Democratic caucus, wanting to look tough on crime. As the State Worker notes, this delay is taking a daily hit on the savings gained from furloughs:
Here's one way that furloughed state workers could look at this: The CDCR budget impasse is whittling away at savings from furloughs. If you take that $3.3 million and multiply it by the 70 days from July 1 through today, you realize the state has burned through $231 million.
A single furlough day cuts about $61 million from the state's payroll, although not all of that savings is in the general fund. (The rounded math: $2.2 billion divided by 36 furlough days in the fiscal year.) If you narrow it down to just salaries that the administration defines as being in the general fund, one furlough day equals about $35 million. (Double check our rounded numbers: $1.3 billion divided by the 36 furlough days.)
In other words, this budget-stalemate-in-miniature has squandered the equivalent of about four furlough days for everyone or nearly seven furlough days if you look only at general fund employees.
Other states have used smart on crime policies to reduce spending without any loss in public safety. They are taking new looks at non-violent offenders, relaxing draconian sentencing policies, targeting parole resources to those who need supervision and concurrently lowering recidivism rates through rehabilitation. Right now, California has the exact wrong set of policies on prisons.
In fact, California is nationally known "for having the most dysfunctional sentencing and parole system" in the country, according to Stanford University professor Joan Petersilia, a criminologist who has spent years working with state officials trying to implement reforms.
"We're too harsh and too lenient. Simultaneously," Petersilia said.
Our mix of tough laws and fixed terms doesn't give prison officials the flexibility to push low-risk offenders toward rehabilitation and keep dangerous criminals behind bars.
But reform efforts haven't gained public traction because we're too busy trying to keep people behind bars -- with Jessica's Law, Megan's Law, the three-strikes law -- to take a hard look at whether locking up more people actually makes us safer.
"The public doesn't understand how illogical the whole system has become," Petersilia said. "We think that somehow we've created something that is able to call out the most dangerous people, send them to prison and keep them in for a very long time.
"And the public is willing to pay whatever it takes to get that type of crime policy."
I disagree with the last sentence. The public is willing to be frightened into initiatives that do nothing for public safety and just spend money needlessly, because they've seen no leadership on the other side for an alternative conception of how to protect the public sensibly and best manage our cirminal justice system. Nobody has argued in public for a more intelligent system for so long, that the public willingness to believe in its possibility has atrophied. We can keep the lock-em-up policies or we can look to a better future. Either way, we're blowing $3 million a day while some Assembly Democrats go on a desperate search for their spines.
Trying to appease the cowards running for higher office in the Assembly rank and file, Karen Bass has dropped the sentencing commission out of the prison reform package.
The sentencing commission was among the most controversial provisions of the Senate prison plan. But on Monday, Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said "a real sentencing commission, with teeth, is my top priority" for corrections legislation.
Steinberg spokeswoman Alicia Dlugosh said Monday that the Senate leader would like to see any legislation passed by the Assembly "realize the same dollar figure in savings as the Senate bill."
The bill passed last week by the Senate, AB 14 XXX would save the state an estimated $600 million, according to an analysis of the bill. But the Assembly seemed poised to make key changes that would reduce those savings by about $220 million.
Among the other changes expected to be made by the Assembly would be the elimination of a provision that would change some crimes which can be either felonies or misdemeanors --known as "wobblers" - exclusively to misdemeanors. The Assembly bill expected to come up for a vote this week would leave the state's wobbler law unchanged.
Assembly Democrats also balked at a provision in the Senate bill that would allow some sick and elderly inmates to finish their sentences under house arrest.
Bass said she hoped to pass the sentencing commission as stand-alone legislation later in the year. First of all, the year ends on September 11, and second, adding the commission to a must-pass reform package was the whole point. If lawmakers objected to it as part of a package, they're not going to turn around and support it in isolation.
Punting on this issue will ensure that federal judges will be mandating reductions of the prison population 10 years down the road. The only reform worth doing in the package now clarifies parole policy, devoting resources to those who need to be monitored instead of the blanket supervision that has turned our parole system into a revolving door. But that will not be enough to turn around the prison crisis for the long-term, without finally doing something about our ever expanding sentencing law.
This also shows the complete dysfunction of the leadership. Darrell Steinberg may not go along with the limited version, and I don't blame him. His chamber has now stuck their neck out three times on tough votes - Tranquillon Ridge drilling, HUTA raids and now this - that the Assembly has quashed. I wasn't unhappy about the first two, but if I was in the Senate, I'd be pissed about all these controversial votes I was needlessly taking. You'd think Karen Bass would have a sense of her caucus and know that she couldn't pass whatever she and Steinberg and the Governor hammered out in private. Because she's on her way out the door in 2010 she has no leverage over the caucus, because everyone's termed out and running for something else they have no fealty to the Assembly, and because they all live perpetually in fear they won't take a vote they know would help future generations deal with a crisis.
As I've said, a broken process will almost always produce a broken result. But individual lawmakers need to be called out. Particularly the three Assemblymembers running for Attorney General who think they're showing off their toughness. When all of them lose, they'll probably attribute it to other factors. They should be reminded of this day.
The SacBee reports that Tough On Crime types are trotting out the same symbols that Lee Atwater used in 1988 to sink a Democratic Presidential candidate.
Willie Horton's shadow haunts the Capitol as lawmakers wrestle with how to cut $1.2 billion from state prisons without endangering public safety.
More than two decades after Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush used televised ads of murderer Horton to paint presidential opponent Michael Dukakis as soft on crime, state GOP lawmakers are slapping Democrats with a similar charge over proposed prison cuts.
The politically explosive issue, coupled with opposition from some law enforcement groups, is making many Democrats jittery - especially those with aspirations for higher office.
I'm hearing that a lot of this nonsense is being pushed by astroturf front groups for the prison guard's union. And considering that Horton was the kind of violent offender who would be exempted from any changes in the law under the plan on offer, it's simply baseless. But this may be more about getting prison guard money and law enforcement support in future elections. But it has the effect of legitimizing the kind of nonsense that has destroyed our prison system, given us the highest recidivism rate in the nation, put the prison health care system in the hands of a federal receiver due to Constitutional violations, and drawn a demand from federal judges to reduce the population by 44,000.
And it's working, of course.
Bass proposes to eliminate a provision in the Senate-passed plan that has attracted the most intense opposition.
Known as "alternative custody," the controversial proposal would allow the release of up to 6,300 low-level, nonviolent inmates who are elderly, medically infirm, or have less than a year remaining on their sentences.
Inmates released under the plan would be subject to electronic monitoring under "house arrest," which could include placement in a residence, local program, hospital or treatment center.
Because blind people with one leg are dangers to society, and we should spend more money warehousing them than we do on the average higher education student. Makes perfect sense. Not to mention the fact that the judges will probably release these same offenders anyway, as part of the federal mandate.
The real fear is that the Assembly will water down the sentencing commission so that lawmakers will have to affirmatively pass their recommendations into law instead of having to pass legislation to prevent those recommendations from being enacted. Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, running for Attorney General, basically says in the piece that he wants such a change. It's a subtle but important difference; essentially the recommendations will be easier to kill under the weakened standard. And so we continue the endless Tough On Crime march that has put us into a ditch.
Meanwhile, as John Myers notes, intransigence on sensible prison reform will simply increase the eventual budget deficit:
Then there's the never-ending state budget blues. The original prison plan, when added to February's budget cuts and gubernatorial plans to reduce prison spending, was a $1.2 billion part of the deficit solution written into law; the original bill, alone, was estimated to save as much as $600 million. But that was with those alternatives to prison cell custody and fewer crimes resulting in felony one-way tickets to the joint. The 'Plan B' version, say staffers, may come up as much as $200 million short (and that's assuming all of the original savings estimated were valid).
In some years, a $200 million gap in the California state budget may not be the end of the world. But this is no ordinary year; cuts a fraction of that size are forcing all kinds of shutdowns of state services. And if this plan becomes the new way to go on prisons, it's going to leave a lot of budget watchers -- and Californians -- wondering what happens next.
Democrats are wrong if they think they can finesse the right into taking the charge that they are "coddling murderers" off the table. Just look at eMeg, claiming that a sentencing commission would reverse three strikes, about as factual a charge as Sarah Palin's "death panels." They'll always be smeared, so they might as well do the right thing for once.
So the modest prison reform deal between legislative leaders and the Governor stalled out in the Assembly last night, and the chamber adjourned for the weekend. Not enough Democrats could be convinced to support the deal, particularly the ones with designs on statewide office or in perceived swing districts.
Let's explain right away what this says about the broken legislative process in Sacramento. It's infuriating that the bill was rushed to the floor without the votes on the Assembly side and without any kind of education campaign to explain the stakes to the public. Federal judges will release 44,000 prisoners. We can either do it smartly or stupidly. There is no other choice.
We knew that $1.2 billion in prison budget cuts had to be allocated for a month. This plan was, in fact, pretty much in place for a month. Did anyone in leadership say a word about it? Did they whip their caucus? Did they explain that without this, a federal judge will use a potentially haphazard process to release prisoners without any reforms, and even if the legislature tries to shift the blame, THEY WILL BE BLAMED ANYWAY because citizens habitually view the legislature as the source of most of the state's troubles?
Instead, the debate gets ruled by Yacht Party misinformation:
Sen. John Benoit, R-Palm Desert, spoke in favor of shutting down some juvenile jails instead of freeing inmates since the population of younger offenders has dropped. "It's a shame we're doing this in such a hurry," he said.
And Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Niguel, spoke out for cutting rehabilitation money rather than letting prisoners out. "The immediate safety of the public must take precedence," she said.
Not only does it do that (overcrowding has led to the lack of space for rehabilitation and treatment programs and the nation's highest recidivism rate, which leads to additional needless crime), but the package put together by the legislature WOULD do that. Schwarzenegger's line-item reductions as part of this deal would cut $180 million in rehab and treatment programs, which is completely insane. That said, the sentencing commission that would come to fruition in this bill is quite important, and those Democrats in the Assembly holding it up are rank cowards who don't have no belief in the value of their own ideas. Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod does:
Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod said, "Do you all live in a parallel world?" She said federal authorities that have found California prisons too overcrowded are going to use their power to release prisoners and that it would be preferable for the state to have control over that process.
"I trump each and everyone of you with children and grandchildren. And you know what? I'm not scared," she said, referring to several GOP senators' references to how they feared for their children's safety.
Still, in the end this is a process problem. The backroom dealmaking made by legislative leaders who have no sway over their caucuses leads to embarrassing results like this. The power of special interests leads to calculations that changes must be made in the dead of night, and the power of money in politics means that fear can rule over hope. Individual cowardly lawmakers in thrall to Tough On Crime thinking led us down this road, but a broken government certainly keeps us there. And it's not, as this shows, just about 2/3.
...I'm hearing that "Crime Victims United," a front group for the prison guard's union which has never received one donation from anyone else, claimed sex offenders would get early release despite being exempted specifically in the bill. They out and out lied, and would have done so in ads in lawmakers' districts. Crime Victims United should be investigated by the FPPC and disbanded. They're an astroturf group using fear and falsehoods to shield a protected class from having to give back their largesse from the state treasury. Ultimately, this is about cowardice on the part of lawmakers, but the influence of money plays a big role.
More details have emerged about the prison reform legislation both houses of the Legislature will take up tomorrow, and according to multiple sources, it will include a sentencing commission, a major victory for reformers if it passes.
Legislative Democrats will push a commission to create a new system for prison sentences as part of Democrats' prison overhaul plan, which will be voted on the floor of both houses Thursday.
The commission, which has been pushed for by liberal Democrats for years, has been a major rift between Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in recent years. But changes made this week over who controls the commission seem to have the governor's OK [...]
Under a draft proposal circulating in the Capitol Wednesday, the new commission would be called the California Public Safety Commission. The panel would consist of 13 members, including the corrections secretary, chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the state public defender. The governor would make eight appointments to the board. The chief justice would make the other two appointments, both of whom must be retired judges.
The bill calls for the commission to present a new set of parole and sentencing rules to the Legislature by June 1, 2012.
I don't really like the Governor controlling 8 of the 13 appointments, just for balance-of-power reasons. But if that's the price of support, and if it truly will make recommendations based on the law and the data, I can live with it. And remember, the commission wouldn't produce findings until June 2012. In the interim we will have a new Governor who could make alternative commission recommendations.
Most important, having an independent commission whose rules would have the force of law unless repealed by the legislature (a much more lasting solution than if they have to positively endorse them with a vote) does really change the game around sentencing in California. It may not work perfectly, but it could really make a difference, and the alternative is the legislature adding one sentencing increase after another as they have done for the last 30 years, and a prison system collapsing under its own weight, as the Governor said today.
Now, I don't agree with all the aspects of prison reform as laid out by the Governor and the Legislature (here's the bill). I think reducing funding for rehabilitation, educational and vocational training programs by $175 million, as called for in the part of the legislation the Governor will enact by line-item appropriation, is insane and completely counter-productive. And I don't see how lowering reimbursement rates for doctors and nurses operating in the prisons, at a time when prison health care is in the hands of a federal receiver, is even legal. But the sentencing commission is crucial enough, and some of the other reforms similarly salutary (like ending blanket parole supervision and concentrating on those with the most serious offenses, or increasing early release credits for those who meet rehabilitation milestones), that I have to accept at least what the Legislature is doing, if not the Governor (most of the bad stuff are in his line items).
The Legislature and Governor are splitting the work here to make the $524 million in cuts more palatable to potential "tough on crime" lawmakers wary of the vote. Greg Lucas thinks that Democrats may not have the votes in the Assembly.
There are 50 Democrats in the lower house. A bill reducing prison spending requires 41 votes. That allows Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, to give "passes" to nine of her members.
Certainly four Democrats Bass would allow not to vote on the bill are those targeted for defeat in 2010 by Republicans - the incumbents of Assembly Districts, 10, 15, 78 and 80.
They are, respectively: Alyson Huber of El Dorado Hills, Joan Buchanan of Alamo, Marty Block of San Diego and Mannie Perez of Coachella.
Certainly the three Assembly members running for Attorney General would want to be spared from having to vote for the bill. The Attorney General is commonly perceived as being California's "Top Cop."
They are: Ted Lieu of Torrance, Pedro Nava of Santa Barbara and Alberto Torrico of Fremont.
In June, Fresno Assemblyman Juan Arambula, a moderate Democrat, re-registered as an independent. In July, he voted with his former Democratic colleagues to close an estimated $24 billion hole in the budget. But whether that willingness extends to prison cuts that will release more parolees into his Central Valley district is uncertain.
Among other Democrats, casting a perceived "anti-public safety" vote would not be a popular in the districts of Cathleen Galgiani of Tracy and Anna Caballero of Salinas.
The governor holds little or no sway with Assembly Republicans so the odds are against him convincing any GOP lawmakers to vote for the bill. That leaves Speaker Bass with a math problem.
We MUST get enough of these Assemblymembers to vote for any bill with a sentencing commission. Gloria Romero's sentencing commission bill in 2007, which was better, died in the Assembly, with help from many of these people. If Karen Bass can knuckle down on her caucus to vote for disastrous cuts to the social safety net, she can find enough to pass the widest-reaching reform package in prisons in 30 years. If you're in the districts of any of these lawmakers, contact them NOW and tell them to vote Yes on ABX3 14.
They don't have to give in to the Tough on Crime mentality which has destroyed our prison system. They can look toward a better future, with sensible policy that saves money and makes Californians safer.
The short-term fights are starting to be VERY short-term. Following up on an earlier item, Democrats in the legislature plan to hold a vote on prison reform as early as Thursday, that would clarify $1.2 billion dollars in cuts. And they don't need any Republican votes to do it.
Over objections from Republican lawmakers, the Legislature plans to take up a majority-vote prison package Thursday that is designed to reduce the state's inmate population by 27,300 and is backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The overall package would save $1.2 billion in part by reducing certain property crimes to misdemeanors, placing low-level parolees on global positioning system monitoring and sending older, infirm prisoners to house arrest or medical facilities to serve the final 12 months of their sentences.
The initial plan included an independent sentencing commission that could report back on changes to the runaway sentencing laws at the heart of the prison crisis. I don't see that mentioned in this article, or anywhere else. Hopefully that remains part of the solution. And like the rest, lawmakers can enact it on a majority-vote basis (which means that the solutions wouldn't take effect for 90 days). Darrell Steinberg reiterated his support today.
"I'm confident we'll have the votes," said Steinberg, who will caucus with Democrats tomorrow
Steinberg said the Senate would vote on the governor's plan, but with slight modifications to clarify which elderly and infirm inmates could be eligible for alternative custody and release.
"The intent has never been to carte blanche release any inmates, elderly, infirm inmates," he said. "It never has been, but there has been some concern expressed, so we want to make sure that there are very tight criteria that would even allow for the possibility of allowing elderly and infirm inmates to be released."
I prefer the People's Budget Fix, which would stop putting nonviolent drug offenders in overcrowded prisons, focus on reducing recidivism through rehabilitation and treatment, institute risk-based parole supervision rather than blanket supervision that inevitably raises the rates of recidivism (often on technical violations of parole), and address the most ineffective areas of the criminal justice system - the burdensome, brutal three strikes law, and the death penalty. The People's Budget Fix coalition held a rally today. You can hear Leland Yee speaking about it here and here.
And I hope they keep fighting. I hope we have a sane criminal justice policy caucus in the legislature as a counterweight to the tough on crime troglodytes. But while the Democratic/Schwarzenegger package isn't perfect, but it's the first step in the right direction in 30 years. Particularly if the sentencing commission is included in the package, it will be historic and very important. We will finally end the long march of building more prisons and warehousing inmates without giving them the tools to actually rehabilitate themselves and become productive members of society, and toward a future where we spend less, create more productive citizens and actually make our state safer.
At the Netroots Nation panel (and a quick thanks to everyone who attended, and the panelists, and Dan Walters for noticing), I identified two short-term fights that are worth engaging. One consists of playing defense - stopping the Parsky Commission from instituting a Latvia-ization of California through eliminating business taxes and flattening the income tax. The other short-term fight concerns the $1.2 billion dollars in cuts to the prison budget, identified in the July budget agreement but not clarified on the specifics until the Legislature returns to work this week. We are starting to see some organizing around that, with human rights and civil liberties leaders massing on the Capitol Steps today to promote sound prison reform instead of just lopping off all rehabilitation and treatment programs for the overcrowded corrections system and calling it a day. Leland Yee, Nancy Skinner, Jim Beall and Tom Ammiano, who just replaced indie Juan Arambula as chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, will speak. So we have a sympathetic ear on one of the key committees.
About a week back, Laura Sullivan produced an NPR report describing the devolution of the corrections system in California, using Johnny Cash's historic concert at Folsom Prison as a launching pad:
The morning that Cash played may have been the high-water mark for Folsom - and for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The men in the cafeteria lived alone in their own prison cells. Almost every one of them was in school or learning a professional trade. The cost of housing them barely registered on the state budget. And when these men walked out of Folsom free, the majority of them never returned to prison.
It was a record no other state could match.
Things have changed. California's prisons are all in a state of crisis. And nowhere is this more visible than at Folsom today.
Folsom was built to hold 1,800 inmates. It now houses 4,427.
It's once-vaunted education and work programs have been cut to just a few classes, with waiting lists more than 1,000 inmates long.
Officers are on furlough. Its medical facility is under federal receivership. And like every other prison in the state, 75 percent of the inmates who are released from Folsom today will be back behind bars within three years.
In addition to having a solid education, transportation and medical system in the early post-war period, California's prisons were once the envy of the nation, too. Then the Tough On Crime crowd got a hold of the levers of power, produced 1,000 laws expanding sentences over 30 years, pushed the public to do the same through ballot initiatives, increased parole sanctions, and the system just got swamped. In the early 1980s we had 20,000 prisoners. Now it's 170,000. The overcrowding decimates rehabilitation, sends nonviolent offenders into what amounts to a college for violent crime, violates prisoner rights by denying proper medical care, and increases costs at every point along the way. Sullivan argues that much of this goes back to the prison guard's union.
In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law.
And the result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000 officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year.
Sullivan uncovered a front group PAC called Crime Victims United of California that has received every one of their donations from the CCPOA. By seeding "victim's rights" groups and enabling more stringent sentencing laws, the CCPOA mainly benefits from the overtime needed for their officers to properly house 170,000 prisoners in cells designed for 100,000. 70% of the prison budget pays salaries. 5% goes to education and vocational programs. And that's the part of the budget being cut.
It only costs her about $100,000 to run these programs - not even a blip in a $10 billion-a-year prison budget. But, says Bracy, the programs are always the first to go. Sometimes she almost feels like giving up.
"It's just not cost-effective to throw men and women in prison and then do nothing with them," she said. "And shame on us for thinking that's safety. It's not public safety. You lock them up and do nothing with them. They go out not even equal to what they came in but worse."
The numbers bear that out, with 90,000 inmates returning to California's prisons every year.
But compare that to the Braille program here at Folsom. Inmates are learning to translate books for the blind. In 20 years, not a single inmate who has been part of the program has ever returned to prison. This year, the program has been cut back to 19 inmates.
Meanwhile, the Schwarzenegger Administration is about to use federal money to increase funding for anti-drug units, which will actually send more nonviolent drug offenders to prison at a time when federal judges have mandated the reduction of the population by 44,000.
This is insanity. But members of the political class, for the most part, still want to be seen as daddy protectors, and will gladly institute the exact same failed policies that have thrown the system into crisis.
We have a moment here, with $1.2 billion in mandated cuts, to create legitimate policies that can both cut costs and reduce the prison population while actually making the state safer. The recent Chino prison riot has led editorialists to come out for sensible prison policies, understanding the connection between stuffing hundreds of thousands of people into modified public storage units and the potential for unrest.
Jean Ross argued on our panel that lawmakers will probably pass the buck and let the judicial branch take the heat for any individual consequences to early release. That would be a mistake, particularly if in the process, they jettison the founding of an independent sentencing commission that would finally address the runaway sentencing laws at the heart of the crisis. The clock is ticking on whether we will have any leadership on this issue, as a report is demanded by the federal judges in mid-September. This is an organizing opportunity, a chance to show an ossified political class that we care about more than just being Tough On Crime.
The federal ruling to reduce the prison population by over 40,000 is the result of a years-long, if not decades-long process, where the failed leaders run amok in Sacramento have let the corrections system grow completely out of control, preferring to warehouse prisoners into modified Public Storage units instead of embarking on same, smart policies that would save us money and make us safer. In response to this damaging comment on the state's failure, the political leadership has... signed up for more failure:
Attorney General Jerry Brown said in an interview that the order is probably not appealable, but eventually the state will have to consider going directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, marking the first time the high court would face such a case.
"I think the Supreme Court would see it differently," Brown said.
State officials said the proper solution is for the governor and legislators to work out a reduction plan as funding becomes available. The state should not be forced to function under the hammer of a federal court order, they said.
"We just don't agree that the federal courts should be ordering us to take these steps," said Matthew Cate, secretary of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
How dare the federal courts order anyone around to respect Constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment! Who the hell do they think they are, a co-equal branch of government?
What's so interesting about this is how abnormal it is. Federal courts grant a significant amount of leeway to the states to manage affairs. But when a state consistently and deliberately violates Constitutional rights without letup, they must act. And that's been true for a long time.
California's archipelago of 33 prisons houses more than 170,000 inmates, nearly twice the number it was designed to safely hold. Almost all of its facilities are bursting at the seams: More than 16,000 prisoners sleep on what are known as "ugly beds" - extra bunks stuffed into cells, gyms, dayrooms, and hallways. [Governor Arnold] Schwarzenegger has referred to the system as a "powder keg."
....Even as Schwarzenegger has promised reform, the corrections budget has exploded during his term, from $4.7 billion in fiscal 2004 to nearly $10 billion in fiscal 2007, or about $49,000 for each adult inmate.
....For more than three decades, California has been trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle where putting more people in prison for longer periods of time has become the answer to every new crime to capture the public's attention - from drug dealing and gangbanging to tragic child abductions. Spurred on by a powerful prison guards' union and politicians afraid of looking soft on crime, corrections has become a bottomless pit, where countless lives and dollars disappear year after year. And now that it has metastasized to the point where even a tough-guy governor and the guards agree that the prisons must be downsized or else (see "When Prison Guards Go Soft"), every attempt at change seems stymied by inertia. The sheer size of the system has become the biggest obstacle to finding alternatives to warehousing criminals without preparing them for anything more than another cycle of incarceration. "The public believes the prison population reflects the crime rate," says James Austin, a corrections consultant who has served on several prison-reform panels in California. "That's just not true. It's because of California's policies and the way it runs the system."
This is a policy failure driven by a political failure, a cowardly series of actions that arises from a broken system of government. Dan Walters happens to be spot-on today - politicians have played on people's fears for 30 years and, faced with the tragedy they created, delayed and procrastinated until it became so torturous that the courts had to step in. From the three-strikes law to the 1,000 sentencing laws passed by the Legislature, all increasing sentences, nobody comes out looking good in this failure of leadership. Even the Attorney General of the United States recognizes that we cannot jail our way out of crime problems.
"We will not focus exclusively on incarceration as the most effective means of protecting public safety," Holder told the American Bar Association delegates meeting here for their annual convention. "Since 2003, spending on incarceration has continued to rise, but crime rates have flattened."
"Today, one out of every 100 adults in America is incarcerated - the highest incarceration rate in the world," he said. But the country has reached a point of diminishing returns at which putting even greater percentages of America's citizens behind bars won't cut the crime rate.
A ruling by the three-judge panel who have effectively taken control of the California prison system has ordered the state to reduce the prison population by as much as 40,000 44,000 inmates within the next two years, finding the system in violation of Constitutional mandates. The Tough On Crime balloon has just popped.
The judges said that reducing prison crowding in California was the only way to change what they called an unconstitutional prison health care system that causes one unnecessary death a week. In a scathing 184-page order, the judges criticized state officials, saying they had failed to comply with previous orders to fix the health care system in the prisons and reduce crowding, and recommended remedies, including reform of the parole system.
The special three-judge panel also described a chaotic prison system where prisoners were stacked in triple bunk beds in gymnasiums, hallways and day rooms; where single guards were often forced to monitor scores of inmates at a time; and where ill inmates died for lack of treatment.
"In these overcrowded conditions, inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent, infectious diseases spread more easily, and lockdowns are sometimes the only means by which to maintain control," the panel wrote. "In short, California's prisons are bursting at the seams and are impossible to manage."
This started as a series of lawsuits claiming that the overcrowded prisons violated inmates' Constitutional right to medical care through the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment while under confinement. The judges concluded that massive reductions were the only way to get the balance right and restore Constitutional order to the process.
It's nothing less than an epic failure at all levels of leadership over the last thirty years which has brought us to the point where judges must mandate reductions in the prisons. A state that is unable to manage its finances can also clearly not manage its plainly illegal corrections system.
This now hangs over the head of lawmakers as they come back from recess in August and determine how to achieve $1.2 billion dollars in savings to the prison system. The Governor and Democrats in the legislature have proscribed various reform programs that would reduce the prison population, change mandatory prison sentences for technical parole violation, and create an independent sentencing commission to look at reforming our draconian sentencing policies. Many of these reforms are desperately needed, would save money for the state and also comprise a smarter, more sensible way to deal with prisons that actually makes Californians safer. Today's ruling makes this not only a good set of ideas, but a mandatory set, given that the state is now under court order to reduce the population.
The Governor's Prisons Secretary Matthew Cate is not ruling out appealing the ruling to the US Supreme Court. He also claims that the state has a plan to reduce overcrowding that would lower the number of prisoners by 35,000 in two years. That's less than required by the ruling. But this is no longer an option; unless they appeal, and it's no guarantee they can, the state must submit a plan to meet the judges' dictates within 45 days. End of story.
The Sacramento Bee comes out for sensible, workable prison policy solutions, including an independent sentencing commission, that would reduce our prison budget and actually make the state safer.
That leaves the biggest issue that legislators need to tackle: California's jumble of complicated, inconsistent and confusing sentencing laws. Other states have resolved the mess by creating an independent, professional, nonpartisan sentencing commission. The time is ripe for California to do the same.
In other states, successful sentencing commissions collect past and current sentencing information and analyze the impact of sentencing changes on prison populations, budgets and crime rates. They recommend an organizing framework for sentencing. Details on who makes appointments and who serves (judges, district attorneys, law enforcement, etc.) get worked out on a bipartisan basis.
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg have shown interest in getting a bill passed. Assembly Bill 1376, which passed the Assembly and is now in the Senate, is the vehicle.
These prison solutions have been discussed for three decades; it's time to act.
It's about time this was recognized. As General Barry McCaffrey has written, we have an addiction to prison in this country, and in particular in this state. An all-too-prevalent "out of sight, out of mind" attitude has blinded the political leadership to the consequences of warehousing prisoners without giving them the tools to pay their debt to society and move on in a positive, successful fashion. The sentencing commission bill has languished for years; it's time to ignore fear and get this done.
In between budget posts, I've lately been in a bit of a tiff with Chris Kelly, an Attorney General candidate and former Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, over his stale, predictable fearmongering about potential early prison releases. There are a bunch of other estimable candidates in the Attorney General's race, one who did himself a ton of good yesterday by leading the fight against the offshore drilling proposal. So maybe I shouldn't take too much time on Kelly. But there's a short-term policy fight coming up next month to determine how to implement $1.2 billion in cuts to the corrections budget, and with some good activism and common sense we can stare down the Tough on Crime crowd and post a needed victory for sensible criminal justice policies. Therefore it's worth looking at Kelly's latest post:
The prison release plan is supposed to save $1.2 billion, but that's just accounting trickery. In fact, a Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics study finds that nearly 70% of early-released inmates are rearrested within three years, 20% of them for violent crime. That will mean more than $3 billion in increased costs from crime while causing serious harm to hundreds of thousands of innocent victims.
I've spoken to police chiefs, law enforcement groups and civic associations throughout California about the issue, and they're deeply worried about the crime wave this scheme will unleash. It will be hard enough to make San Jose a safer community in tough economic times without the problems caused by early release.
Obviously, Kelly hasn't talked to the California Police Chiefs Association, which endorsed the plan as a smart step to begin to move away from the failed prison policies of the last thirty years. Foremost among these new ideas is the concept of targeting resources - instead of warehousing the terminally ill or blanket strict supervision on everyone released regardless of determining possibility of recidivism, we can put resources into programs that provide opportunity for prisoners to pay their debt to society and move on. This deal doesn't do all of that, but it does, for example, put ill and infirm prisoners under home detention or in a care facility, which doesn't impact public safety and saves money. It offers incentives for prisoners to complete rehabilitation plans. It reviews the cases of illegal immigrants in jails instead of just tossing them in the lap of the ICE to deal with, which would actually be the kind of misguided policy Kelly warns against. And most important, it includes an independent sentencing commission, outside of politics, which can look at our sentencing laws and make recommendations for the legislature to adopt on an up-or-down vote.
Using the buzzword of "early release" of "dangerous prisoners" is an old Tough on Crime ploy from way back, evoking memories of the Willie Horton ad in the 1988 Presidential race. It's irresponsible and not relevant to what is being discussed. We have the perfect Tough on Crime prison policy right now - and it's not working in every respect, to the extent that federal courts have stepped in to take control of it. Overcrowded prisons cannot fulfill their core mission of rehabilitating those jailed, and that's especially true where nonviolent offenders who need medical treatment for addiction and not incarceration are concerned. Brute force has not worked in making the state safer and has certainly caused our budget to skyrocket. And the truth is that more sensible policies can save money and create better prisons at the same time.
We need real reform in prison and parole policy, through concentrated resources, community corrections, and maintaining manageable prison capacity for those who really need to be there, and what will get decided in the legislature next month represents an important step. It can be easily derailed by fearmongering from the likes of Chris Kelly, trying to win an election on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised, on whom such brute-force policies typically rain down.
Over the next month I'll be looking far more closely at this issue, as it's the first big battle in regaining control of our state. And it's a winnable fight.
This afternoon we got the Leak of the Week from Capitol Weekly - a look at Dennis Hollingsworth's letter to his entire caucus. It's in budget-ese, but Zed is positively giddy about all the cuts to social services, all the denial of fee increases, and he's basically telling his caucus they got everything they wanted. It was good to see the inside thinking, especially if Yacht Party members turned around and voted against the budget. They know that their preferred option is deeply unpopular, and would rather distance themselves from this solution and make the Democrats own the budget. So this was a key document counteracting that.
Then at around 2:30, Michael Rothfeld changed his original process story about legislators building support for the deal into this bombshell:
The state budget deal negotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders would reduce the population of California prisons by nearly 27,000 inmates in the current fiscal year.
That would be done with a combination of new measures, including allowing some inmates to finish their sentences on home detention, creating new incentives for completion of rehabilitation programs and scaling back parole supervision for the least serious offenders.
The proposal, details of which were obtained by The Times, would save a total of $1.2 billion in the coming year.
It is unclear whether Republicans will vote for a budget plan that includes reduction of the state prison system, which now houses 170,000 inmates. Some GOP votes are needed to pass a budget in California.
If Republicans demur, the Democrats who dominate the Legislature could approve the prison proposal as separate legislation with a simple majority vote, which would not require GOP support [...]
The budget plan also would create a sentencing commission to reexamine the state penal code, which would not save money immediately but would advance plans under discussion by lawmakers for years. The commission would be charged with establishing new sentencing guidelines by July 1, 2012.
Prisons are slated for $1.2 billion in cuts in the budget, and most stories last night claimed that included no early release. Clearly Republicans - and possibly the Governor - saw those cuts as best employed by turning the prisons into Public Storage units, cutting all drug treatment and vocational training programs and reducing corrections officer overtime. So this looked to be a bait-and-switch by the Democratic legislature.
Except nobody seems to know how the LA Times got this story. And less than an hour later, Sam Blakeslee alerts the media:
Throughout budget negotiations we insisted that Republican votes would never be provided for a budget deal that included early release of prisoners.
Our caucus and staff developed a cut strategy for corrections that provided the necessary savings to close the deficit without risking public safety.
We had a clear understanding with the democrats that NO corrections bill would be a part of the budget and that we would have an honest chance to contest the policy issues in the light of day in August.
Just two hours ago I learned from staff that Senate democrats are concocting a radioactive corrections bill that includeds the worst of the worst _ sentencing commission and release of 27,000 prisoners, etc
When I spoke with Dennis he was as surprised and upset as I was regarding what appears to be a serious breach of the agreement in the Big 5.
I have called and personally told both Karen and Darrell that their will be no republican votes for any portion of the budget if they allow such a bill to be part of the package.
This seems just a little too neat to me. This report was leaked to the Times anonymously, after a separate email from the Senate GOP gets leaked showing what a great snow job they think they got over the Democrats. And then Blakeslee has an email out to his caucus - within less than an hour of the story leak - that comes up with a credible reason to shut down the deal, blaming those double-crossing Democrats.
FWIW I'd love a sentencing commission/early release of nonviolent offenders bill to become a reality, but I hardly believe that Senate Democrats, who as a caucus have participated in 30 years' worth of sentencing increases, and who scuttled a sentencing commission bill from Gloria Romero just last year, would sneak this into a budget bill out of nowhere, with complete language less than a day after a deal was reached. It would be completely out of line with prior history. It doesn't scan at all.
But it's sure a bonne chance for Republicans to have this fall in their lap...
...OK, so the Governor's Corrections Secy is briefing reporters. And will you look at that, the Times' story was wrong, as was Asm. Blakeslee! The report of 27,000 released is misleading, says the Secretary, but the Administration is interested in some reforms, including a sentencing commission. Wow, that's great, at least in theory. They are offering early release credits that would maybe release 1,700 total. This looks more and more like a coordinated hissy fit laundered through a compliant media.
Chris Kelly, who thinks he's running for Attorney General next year, has responded to my criticism of his perpetuation of fearmongering "tough on crime" policies with an email to supporters:
The politics-as-usual crowd is attacking my opposition to the early release plan -- even saying that "Chris Kelly is making a fool out of himself" for standing up for safe California communities. Well, releasing 20,000 convicted felons early might be Sacramento's idea of prison reform, but it isn't one that will keep California safe -- and it won't save a single dollar in the process, which was the whole rationale for doing it in the first place!
I'm apparently part of the "politics-as-usual" crowd for arguing against the mentality that has produced 1,000 sentencing laws in the last thirty years that increased sentences. But some facts throughout this would help. First of all, the 20,000 number from the Governor came in part from releasing all imprisoned undocumented immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a provision that was long ago scaled back, since ICE showed no interest in taking the responsibility, and the Governor circumscribed that proposal with so many caveats that only 1,400 of the more than 18,000 undocumented qualified. In reality, the scale of release will be lower than initially proposed. So Kelly is engaging in the familiar tactic of arguing against something that won't happen so he can post a "win" after the fact.
But the real danger of Kelly whipping up opposition to this is how it impacts any sensible sentencing or parole reform. Here, Kelly shows that he has no idea what he's talking about with respect to criminal justice policy:
Instead of protecting California communities, the politics-as-usual crowd ignores the fact that early release of more than 10% of the state prison population won't just include "terminally ill, nonviolent drug offenders and people returned to prison for the crime of technical parole violations" -- many dangerous felons will be back on the streets too.
The critics seem to have forgotten that a man with a technical parole violation shot and killed four officers in Oakland just months ago, and they also conveniently ignore that releasing 20,000 prisoners will disproportionally impact some of California's most vulnerable communities.
The ignorance of this comment is stunning. As Berkeley law professor and parole policy expert Jonathan Simon illustrated a couple months back, the Lovelle Mixon shooting was an example of what's WRONG with our parole system, not what's right. The incident has been used to raise the fear of crime and the dangers of releasing felons. What is not mentioned is that Mixon's violation of ridiculously stringent parole policy, which meant a sure trip back to jail, arguably CAUSED the shooting, as Mixon vowed not to return to prison and chose to shoot his way out of the problem. That's aberrant behavior, and using it to make any larger point about how frightening it is to release prisoners is Willie Horton-izing to the extreme. But it's a function of the extreme pressure of three years of supervisory parole on everyone who walks out of California prisons.
But unlike many other states that also eliminated early release through parole, California continued to require parole supervision in the community for all released prisoners. And that, I think, is a big part of what's broken. People are sent to California prisons for a determinate amount of time, based upon the seriousness of their crime. After they've served this sentence, it's neither justified nor effective to add up to three years of parole supervision for each and every ex-offender - without making any distinction between those whose criminal record or psychological profile suggest they'll commit a crime that will harm the community, and those who pose no such threat.
So the parole system has little real capacity to monitor and protect us from those who pose a danger of committing serious new crimes. And it exposes ex-offenders - many of whom pose little threat of committing such crimes - to the likelihood of being sent back to prison. (This is a really big problem, when you think of our prison overcrowding and our budget crisis).
Parolees are required to consent to searches of their person and property. If officers stop a car in Oakland, and somebody in that car is on parole, police have a lot of leeway to disregard normal constitutional limits on search-and-seizure authority. They can use any evidence collected in this situation against the parolee - and also, of course, can attempt to use the coercion of plea bargaining to get evidence against other people in the car.
In recent years, as many as 70 percent of those on parole in California have been sent back to prison - only a small percentage of whom have committed a new crime (14 percent in 2007); more than half were sent back for what are called "technical" parole violations. These parolees are "returned to custody" by the Board of Prison Terms, very often for conduct that would not earn them (or other California citizens) prison time in a court. Turning in a positive drug test is an example; even missing an appointment with parole staff can result in re-imprisonment.
It's also hilarious that Kelly thinks stopping release of nonviolent offenders harms public safety, not eliminating drug treatment and vocational training in prisons, or forcibly taking local government monies so they have to slash their public safety budgets, but that's for another time.
Today's LA Times story about a handful of prisoners released with 60 days or less remaining on their sentences probably raises hackles on the backs of the necks of the Tough on Crime crowd, but it really shows how fundamentally broken the state's prison system remains. Because look what the charges were on all of the prisoners released.
Reporting from Sacramento -- California prison officials, facing severe overcrowding and a financial crisis, have been granting early releases to inmates serving time for parole violations.
State officials said the dozens of prisoners set free from the California Institution for Men in Chino and from lockups in San Diego and Shasta counties had 60 days or less left on their terms, or had been accused of violations and were awaiting hearings. The releases were approved by the state parole board.
At least 89 inmates have been freed or approved for early release during the last two months. Others have been sent to home detention, drug rehabilitation programs or similar alternative punishments.
It's not an anomaly to see just 89 inmates charged with parole violations. In fact, more than two-thirds of all prisoners admitted to state prisons in 2007 commit the crime of violating parole guidelines. This is at least twice as many as virtually any other state.
On average, the nation's state and federal prisons took in almost two new offenders for every parole violator, but in California, the reverse is true. In 2007, California prisons took in 139,608 inmates and 92,628 of them were parole violators, almost a 2-1 ratio. In only one other state, Washington, did parole violators outnumber those being jailed by the courts, and that was only by 126 inmates.
If Arnie Antionette were truly talking about reform instead of policies that destroy the social safety net, he'd talk about completely overhauling a parole system that is clearly too constrictive, that fails Californians and makes us all less safe. When you warehouse 170,000 inmates in jails that only fit 100,000, you turn them into institutes of higher learning for violent crime instead of rehabilitation centers. In addition to the cost of overtime for parole officers and prison guards, the costs to the criminal justice system naturally increase with the revolving door for inmates, not to mention the societal and human costs.
Unfortunately, we don't have a reform agenda in this state, just a bunch of lawmakers trying to get across the line to the next budget, to the next election. If there was such a thing as innovation and leadership we would have revamped this failed parole policy long ago.
Here's an excellent Q&A, really a must read, with UC Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Simon, an expert on parole policy. Using the killing of four Oakland police officers by Lovelle Mixon, who was on parole at the time, Simon sets aside the myths about parole and looks at the hard facts - that this is an unbelievably broken system, particularly in California, one that really cannot fulfill the mission set out for it 100 years ago. Parole was something of an employment agency upon its inception, supervising ex-convicts at their workplace and letting them go on with their lives. In today's environment of social Darwinism, ex-cons are sent back onto the streets with no money and no skills to get a job, and so they devolve into homelessness or drug abuse, making it nearly impossible for parole officers to even find parolees, let alone keep them out of trouble.
It really can't work - which you'll see if you look at the category of parolees who are simply of unknown whereabouts. These parolees are described as PAL, for "parolee at large," in official California statistics.
Statewide, 14.6 percent of all parolees were PAL in 2005; in large cities like Oakland and Los Angeles it's probably closer to 25 percent. This sounds alarming, although authorities have little basis for knowing the status of these people. Is the parolee-at-large wandering around homeless and has he forgotten to come in for an appointment, or to take his medications if he or she is on psychiatric treatment? Or, as with Lovelle Mixon, has the person gone back to doing some very serious crimes and is he evading detection? We're fooling ourselves if we think that this century-old method of surveilling people in the community, through periodic contacts, can work with a population as isolated and marginalized as the one upon which we now focus our penal attention.
Simon theorizes that California's parole system works even worse than most states because we eliminated early release through parole, but maintained the strict supervision requirements that invariably send parolees back to prison:
But unlike many other states that also eliminated early release through parole, California continued to require parole supervision in the community for all released prisoners. And that, I think, is a big part of what's broken. People are sent to California prisons for a determinate amount of time, based upon the seriousness of their crime. After they've served this sentence, it's neither justified nor effective to add up to three years of parole supervision for each and every ex-offender - without making any distinction between those whose criminal record or psychological profile suggest they'll commit a crime that will harm the community, and those who pose no such threat.
So the parole system has little real capacity to monitor and protect us from those who pose a danger of committing serious new crimes. And it exposes ex-offenders - many of whom pose little threat of committing such crimes - to the likelihood of being sent back to prison. (This is a really big problem, when you think of our prison overcrowding and our budget crisis).
Parolees are required to consent to searches of their person and property. If officers stop a car in Oakland, and somebody in that car is on parole, police have a lot of leeway to disregard normal constitutional limits on search-and-seizure authority. They can use any evidence collected in this situation against the parolee - and also, of course, can attempt to use the coercion of plea bargaining to get evidence against other people in the car.
In recent years, as many as 70 percent of those on parole in California have been sent back to prison - only a small percentage of whom have committed a new crime (14 percent in 2007); more than half were sent back for what are called "technical" parole violations. These parolees are "returned to custody" by the Board of Prison Terms, very often for conduct that would not earn them (or other California citizens) prison time in a court. Turning in a positive drug test is an example; even missing an appointment with parole staff can result in re-imprisonment.
By the way, no other state has the recidivism rate of California, and certainly no other state sends as many people back to prison for technical violations of their parole appointments. And due to the three-strikes law as well as increased sentences over 30 years, we have more Californians in prison on life sentences - about thirty thousand - as there were TOTAL PRISONERS in 1977. The parole board is theoretically supposed to monitor the "lifers" and let out those who served their mandatory minimums and can be reasonably seen as representing no risk to the community, but in reality we let out something like 5 per year. Meanwhile more life sentences are given to thousands of prisoners every year, and the problem simply grows.
Even Arnold Schwarzenegger's supposedly bold plan to release all undocumented immigrants from prison and deport them - something he hasn't bothered to run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the federal government - has so many strings on what type of prisoners should be allowed to go free (one felony conviction, nonviolent and nonsexual crime, etc.) that only 1,400 out of 18,000 would qualify.
Tough on crime policies have very simply destroyed California, leaving every lawmaker looking over his or her shoulder trying to be crueler toward criminals than their opponents. In the end, we all suffer, as scarce resources get taken up by a prison-industrial complex that is the fastest-growing sector of the state budget. These policies have been discredited, and other states have proven that you can maintain the peace and provide for public safety while not stuffing prisons with a seemingly endless amount of criminals. We can bring the idea of corrections, and rehabilitation, back to the corrections process, if we only shake off the fear that practically every politician exudes when promoting these terrible policies.
Nobody likes the road that the budget appears to be going down, but one side benefit, perhaps the only one, is that we might yet have a conversation about the unjust and costly prison crisis that has deeply impacted the current situation. Here's Asm. Jim Beall (D-Campbell) yesterday:
We've got to reduce spending on our highest cost-drivers, prisons and health care. The prison budget has doubled in the past decade to $10 billion. The state has 173,000 inmates... Yet, California has a 70 percent recidivism rate. We aren't producing the results for the money we spend... For over half of the prisoners, drugs or alcohol played some role in their crimes. A 2006 UCLA study said 42 percent of our inmates needed alcohol treatment and 56 percent needed drug treatment. It's clear: The state should emphasize alcohol and drug treatment programs and prevention education.
Absolutely. Now, the way that the Governor is going about this, by just trying to dump undocumented immigrants in prison on the ICE and mass release without restructuring and treatment and rehab, is of course dicey. He will be helped by the Administration's effort to identify every undocumented immigrant and ready them for deportation, but that's a years-long process.
However, there are signals that the powerful prison guard's union knows exactly what could be coming - and they're trying to get out in front of it by voluntarily offering well over $6 billion in cuts. Most of it goes to capping prison health care, which has already been found to be Constitutionally inadequate, and halting prison expansion through AB900, which I think is spent through bond issues and not the General Fund. But there are other interesting recommendations in there:
2. Save up to $500 million by trimming CDCR administrative staff, which has ballooned by 400 new positions in recent months and more than doubled two of the department's administrative divisions [...]
7. Save potentially hundreds of millions of dollars ($20,000 per parolee) by embracing our past recommendation to expand Drug Court, Mental Health Court, Reentry Court and Revocation Court.
9. Save millions by no longer providing CDCR managers and headquarters staff with state vehicles and mileage allowances for commuting to work.
10. Conduct annual performance audits to determine which parole and rehabilitation programs are achieving their goals.
Remember, these are the prison guard's union's recommendations. They have an interest in keeping jails packed and ensuring overtime for their employees to manage the overcrowding. And even they understand both the need for cost-cutting and the need to expand the role of drug treatment and mental health rather than defaulting to incarceration. They're behind the curve and still modest in their goals, but significantly, the ball is moving in the direction of reducing prison costs for the first time in a long while. Obviously, jumping from this to reforming sentencing and keeping nonviolent offenders out of prison and into treatment won't be easy, and the residual "tough on crime" stance still predominates among the political class. But finally, we're having the conversation as a crisis forces the issue. Democrats ought to take this and run with it, and demand the kind of sane prison policies here that we see in Kansas and Texas.
...incidentally, buried within the Legislative Analyst's cost-cutting proposals was one recommending "altering California's three-strikes law." We're starting to get serious.
When the Administration announced an end to medical marijuana raids by the DEA, they abruptly took back the statement a few hours later. There was a bit of confusion about the new policy. Eric Holder put an end to that.
Attorney General Eric Holder signaled a change on medical marijuana policy Wednesday, saying federal agents will target marijuana distributors only when they violate both federal and state law.
That would be a departure from the policy of the Bush administration, which targeted medical marijuana dispensaries in California even if they complied with that state's law.
"The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law," Holder said in a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Justice Department.
Good. There is little justification to waste Justice Department resources harassing Californians and Americans in 12 other states engaging in perfectly legal activity. Holder must follow the law but he also has discretion in setting priorities, and it's good to see him recognize that arresting local businessmen and their patients makes no sense. There remain questions about outstanding medical marijuana federal court cases with over two dozen dispensaries, and hopefully the solution will be to drop the charges.
In a related story, Maxine Waters wants to end mandatory minimum sentencing for federal drug offenses, and the bill has 15 co-sponsors. The Bureau of Prisons budget has increased 25-fold since mandatory minimums were introduced. Small drug cases belong in state courts, where offenders could be given treatment instead of jail. Furthermore, these kind of drug cases disproportionately impact minority communities.
H.R. 1466, the Major Drug Trafficking Prosecution Act of 2009, seeks to repeal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders and to give courts the ability to determine sentences based on all the facts, not just drug weight. It would also refocus federal resources on major drug traffickers instead of low-level offenders. There is currently no companion bill in the Senate.
Lost amidst the union-busting and efforts to destroy public schools in Arnold's budget proposal is maybe the first serious, legitimate attempt to sensibly manage the prison crisis in decades, with a reform plan that would save the state $1 billion by boarding up the revolving door between jail and parole for nonviolent offenders.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal would reduce by tens of thousands the number of criminals behind bars and under community supervision.
Parole would be eliminated for all nonserious, nonviolent and non-sex offenders. The proposal would cut the parole population by about 65,000 by June 30, 2010, or more than half of the Christmas Eve count of 123,144.
At the same time, the corrections plan calls for increasing good-time credits for inmates who obey the rules and complete rehabilitation programs. Combined with the new parole policies that would result in fewer violators forced back into custody, the proposal would reduce the prison population by 15,000 by June 30, 2010. It stood at 171,542 on Dec. 24.
It is insane and wrong, particularly during this budget meltdown but really in general, that 2/3 of all prisoners entering the system in 2007 were parole violators. These are minor, possibly technical offenses with little bearing on public safety that clog up the jails, creating constitutional crises. California is the worst state in the union when it comes to parole policy, and these changes would simply bring the state in line with the rest of the country, all of which are able to manage without a perpetual crime wave.
Now, it may anger tough on crime advocates, as well as those who have a self-interested stake like the prison guards, but I have to say that they are the right people to anger.
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, still at odds with Schwarzenegger over a new contract, blasted the plan.
"What it means is residual costs to all citizens of California and higher insurance rates and more crime," said CCPOA spokesman Lance Corcoran, whose union represents about 30,000 correctional officers and parole agents. "These are individuals who do not take advantage of opportunities for change, and they are not going to change," he said of the offenders who stand to benefit from the proposals.
More scaremongering isn't going to work. There is no reason for tough on crime policies to continue to rule the day. Those days are over.
The proposals on rehabilitation and time credits for prisoners, which would accrue in county lockups and get advanced if detainees take drug, vocational and educational programs, are already in the work-around budget passed by the Legislature. Arnold could go ahead and sign that, and put us on a more responsible criminal justice path immediately.
This is a major, if tentative, victory for criminal justice reform advocates.
California's three-strikes sentencing law suffered a blow Tuesday when a federal appeals court struck down as unconstitutional a 28-years-to-life sentence for a sex offender who failed to register with local police at the correct time of year.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case of Cecilio Gonzalez back to federal district court in Los Angeles for resentencing after finding his 2001 penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the 8th Amendment.
Gonzalez's harsh sentence was grossly disproportionate to his "entirely passive, harmless and technical violation of the registration law," the appeals court said.
This case represented the unintended consequence of three-strikes carried out to its most ridiculous extreme. 28 to life for registering, but not at the right time of year? Nuts. This isn't a crime in 11 states, and the maximum sentence allowed by customary law in California is three years.
In case the "tough on crime" absolutists start shieking about "activist liberal judges" overturning the will of the people, consider who wrote this opinion: Jay Bybee. Nominated by George W. Bush Jay Bybee. Writer of the fucking torture memo Jay Bybee. Even a guy who justified the torture of prisoners considers this cruel and unusual punishment. There is no indication whether or not Jerry Brown would carry this to an appeal, but considering the opinion of this very conservative jurist, I would imagine the US Supreme Court would at least potentially rule the same way, although they struck down a similar challenge to three strikes in 2003 on a 5-4 vote. Put it this way, I don't see Bybee as more conservative than Anthony Kennedy.
This does not invalidate three strikes entirely, but it certainly gives a ray of hope to those locked up for a minor third crime to challenge their sentencing. And it provides a framework to show how unjust and counter-productive these stringent mandatory sentences are. Three strikes is more of a symptom than the entire problem - the legislature has approved over 1,000 higher sentences in the past 30 years. But this is an important start, to end the tyranny of "tough on crime" absolutism that has contributed to busting the state budget and making this the worst state in the union when it comes to the corrections system.
