California spending billions to build new prisons

Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

An inmate passes through a corridor of the medical center at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, where a $33.6 million, 64-bed medical center addition to the existing hospital will open next month.

At a dusty construction site in Vacaville adjacent to a prison yard, workers are putting the finishing touches on a 45,000-square-foot structure that will soon house dozens of California's most severely mentally ill offenders.

When the $33.6 million project at the California Medical Facility is completed this fall, prison psychologists and psychiatrists will have private offices to treat their patients, and inmates requiring inpatient care will have individual cells near a nurse's station, as required by law.

The building, which will include 64 cells, is one of 13 prison construction projects being funded by a $7.4 billion bond approved by the Legislature in 2007. It is all part of an effort by the state to comply with a court order to reduce overcrowding and improve health care in its prisons.

Even as the construction continues, however - and as the state continues to face pressure to reduce its prison population - there is debate over whether Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown should move forward with the projects.

Thirteen other states have seen their inmate populations drop and are working to close prisons - including Texas, which began shutting down a century-old lockup last week.

Some people think California should follow suit.

"It's such a failed opportunity if we just build more beds instead of getting smart about policies," said Emily Harris of Californians United for a Responsible Budget, a coalition working to reduce the state's prison population and spending. "We know in California that if we build them, we will fill them."

The state, she said, should "use this as an opportunity to make smart reforms that advocates have been pushing for decades, and that we know from recent polls voters support."

Changing needs
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office bolstered that argument last week when it released a report recommending that the state reconsider its construction program.

The report's author, Paul Golaszewski, said approximately 1,500 low-security beds proposed at two of the 13 construction sites may not be needed once the state starts sending more inmates to local jails this fall under the governor's realignment plan, and that all future projects should be carefully evaluated.

"We don't know for sure whether they will need these projects," he said. "We don't think they should be delivering more dorm beds. Especially with realignment, it doesn't make sense."

After its completion next month, the Vacaville center will house maximum-security mentally ill inmates who need an inpatient setting. It will have an office area for mental health workers, a dining hall and an exercise yard. Rooms for group therapy will be furnished with heavy, rubber chairs that are impossible to pick up or use as a weapon. There will also be areas for occupational therapy and a handful of rooms with restraints or padded walls. All 64 cells will be within 90 feet of a nurse's station, as required by law.

Court order
Prison officials say this and the other 12 projects are medical and mental health sites that are crucial to getting the state out from under the court order, which arose when advocates sued, claiming that shoddy medical and mental health treatment was violating inmates' rights to decent care and leading to the preventable deaths of up to 50 inmates a year.

A federal court agreed, placed medical care under the control of a federal receiver and ordered the state to reduce its prison population by nearly 34,000 inmates over the next two years.

The conundrum for prison officials is that the population reduction order is directly linked to the court's finding of inadequate medical care and mental health treatment. Prison officials argue that the construction projects under way will help the state comply with the courts.

Improving services
The Vacaville center, for example, won't do much to ease crowding in the main prison, which is about 25 percent over capacity. But the new center will free up treatment space and help state officials better deliver mental health services, according to Stirling Price, who runs the Department of Mental Health's psychiatric program at the prison.

Currently, Vacaville inmates attend group therapy in makeshift rooms, including old cafeterias, and mental health workers must share tiny, crowded offices for individual therapy sessions. The new housing unit will give psychologists and psychiatrists their own office space away from inmates.

Another three-story, $24 million treatment space is also being built at the same prison for mentally ill patients who can be treated in an outpatient setting.

In all, mentally ill patients make up about one-third of the Vacaville institution's population.

"The construction will allow us to provide services based on a specific need. Right now it tends to be based on where the inmate lives," said David Silbaugh, chief psychologist at the prison. "The idea is to have (inmates) at the top of their game when they go back into the community."

State officials said the projects under AB900, the prison construction and rehabilitation law, have been constantly readjusted to match new policies, including Brown's plan to begin sending low-level offenders to county jails starting Oct. 1. Several projects for lower-security inmate housing were dropped after it became apparent they were not needed.

"We carefully thought through the things we needed, knowing the fiscal challenges of the state," said Deborah Hysen, deputy director of planning, construction and management at the prison agency. "We wanted to know that what we needed, we would need for a very long time, so if there is any concern about us going slow, it might have to do with the fact that we want to be careful."

Steep price tag
The price tag of these medical and mental health sites has nevertheless drawn scrutiny. On average, taxpayers will shell out $315,000 per bed for the projects that are under way.

Nancy Kincaid, a spokeswoman for the federal receiver in charge of health care in prisons, said the investment is worth it. The projects, she said, will allow California to treat far more inmates behind prison walls at a much cheaper cost than transporting them to outside centers.

"The people going back to the counties ... are not the people that use the medical facilities generally," she said. "Eighty to 90 percent are used by inmates with long-term sentences."

Kincaid said outside medical care contracts are the state's largest single expense, costing about $480 million a year.

The debate is likely to continue as the state considers moving forward with a handful of other projects authorized under AB900. Those include expansions of local jails, high-security additions to existing prisons and the creation of re-entry centers in cities and counties around California.

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who earlier this year called on Brown to rethink the AB900 projects, said he agrees with the Legislative Analyst's Office report calling for reassessments of individual projects, but feels the prison department has done a good job so far focusing on things that are necessary.

"We need to match the beds we have to the needs we have, which is not currently the case," he said. "But we cannot and will not build our way out of our prison problem."

Prison construction
AB900 was signed into law in May 2007, authorizing $7.4 billion in lease revenue bonds for the construction or expansion of prisons, jails and re-entry centers. Nearly half of that money, $3.5 billion, will be used to add new beds and treatment and programming space at existing prisons. Among the ongoing projects are:

-- California Medical Facility

Location: Vacaville

Details: 64-bed mental health center at existing hospital

Cost: $33.6 million, or $526,000 a bed

Estimated date of completion: September

-- California Institution for Women

Location: Chino

Details: 45-bed acute- and intermediate-care mental health center for female inmates

Cost: $33.7 million or $750,000 a bed

Estimated date of completion: December

-- California Health Care Facility

Location: Stockton

Details: 1.2 million-square-foot medical center with 1,722 beds for patient-inmates

Cost: $906 million, or $52,000 a bed

Estimated date of completion: July 2013

-- California Men's Colony

Location: San Luis Obispo

Details: 50-bed mental health crisis unit

Cost: $35.7 million or $715,000 per bed

Estimated date of completion: September 2012

-- California Medical Facility

Location: Vacaville

Details: Additional treatment and office space for mental health patients

Cost: $24.2 million; no beds

Estimated date of completion: February 2013

-- DeWitt-Nelson YCF Conversion

Location: Stockton

Details: Renovation of former youth lockup into 1,133-bed adult mental health treatment center

Cost: $188 million, or $16,500 a bed

Estimated date of completion: August 2013

-- Estrella

Location: Paso Robles

Details: Conversion of former youth lockup to 1,000-bed adult center aimed at inmates with medical needs.

Cost: $110 million or $11,000 a bed

Estimated date of completion: unknown

-- California State Prison, Sacramento, Enhanced Outpatient program

Location: Sacramento

Details: Treatment and office space for 192 inmates

Cost: $12.7 million, no beds

Estimated date of completion: November

-- Lancaster State Prison

Location: Lancaster

Details: Treatment and office space for mental health services for 150 inmates

Cost: $11.49 million, no beds

Estimated date of completion: July 2012

-- Central California Women's Facility

Location: Chowchilla

Details: Treatment and office space for inmates with mental health treatment needs

Cost: $17.7 million, no beds

Estimated date of completion: October 2013

-- Corcoran State Prison

Location: Corcoran (Kings County)

Details: 14,932-square-foot building for mental health treatment space for existing inmates

Cost: $16.5 million, no beds

Estimated date of completion: February 2013

-- Salinas Valley State Prison

Location: Soledad

Details: Treatment and office space for mental health treatment for existing inmates

Cost: $25.3 million, no beds

Estimated date of completion: July 2013

-- Northern California Re-entry Facility

Location: Stockton

Details: 500-bed re-entry center for inmates at the end of their sentence

Cost: $116.8 million or $23,000 a bed

Estimated date of completion: 2013

-- Additional projects funded by AB900

$700 million to improve health sites at six existing prisons

$2.6 billion for up to 10,000 beds at secure re-entry centers in cities and counties around the state. The centers are located in local communities where inmates can serve the last part of their sentences and receive job training, mental heath and substance-abuse counseling, housing placement and other help.

At least two high-security additions to existing prisons at an unknown cost.

$1.2 billion for expansion of local jails. Counties may apply for the money if they agree to host a re-entry center. Five counties have already signed on.

E-mail Marisa Lagos at mlagos@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/13/MNHN1KJ12V.DTL&ao=all#ixzz1V0yQe8tR

'Revolving door' of California prisons

 'Revolving door' of California prisons
The latest on California politics and government
June 9, 2011
 'Revolving door' of California prisons
California's prison system takes center stage this morning as two Senate committees hear from a public safety expert on national trends in cutting recidivism and prison costs.

Adam Gelb directs the Washington-based Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project, which aims to help states develop policies on sentencing and corrections.

He's also the author of "State of Recidivism: The Revolving Door of America's Prisons," a Pew report published in April that notes most inmates returned to prison in California are getting locked up on technical violations.

That hearing starts at 9 a.m. in the Capitol's Room 4203.
With one day left before the redistricting commission releases its draft maps, members of SEIU California are announcing a new election strategy this morning that they say will help break Sacramento's partisan gridlock.

The union's leader, David Kieffer, said yesterday in a talk with the Bee Capitol Bureau that he thinks Democrats can defeat conservative Republicans next year by taking advantage of the state's new "top-two" primary system.

Meanwhile, Sen. Leland Yee and others are still on alert, as the U.S. Supreme Court may rule this morning on the state's law banning the sale or rental of excessively violent video games to children.
The San Francisco Democrat carried Assembly Bill 1179, which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down in 2009 "as presumptively invalid content-based restriction on speech" violating the First Amendment. Gov. Jerry Brown appealed that decision back when he was attorney general.
If the court issues a ruling, Yee and others will hold a news conference at San Francisco's Hiram Johnson State Building.

VETERANS: Here are three names you don't usually see in the same sentence: Doris Matsui, Dan Lungren and Tom McClintock. The congressmembers are scheduled to attend a presser in which the U.S. Olympic Committee and the city of Sacramento's Department of Parks and Recreation announce a new sports initiative for veterans. The event starts at 10 a.m. at Samuel C. Pannell Community Center, 2450 Meadowview Road.

BUDGET: Next10 releases an update to its nonpartisan California Budget Challenge with an interactive budget workshop at Commonwealth Club in San Francisco from 10 a.m. to noon. Listed speakers include John Myers of KQED Public Radio, Dan Schnur of the University of Southern California's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, Jim Mayer of California Forward, and F. Noel Perry of Next10.

CRIME: Democratic Assemblyman Roger Dickinson of Sacramento and Assemblywoman Alyson Huber of El Dorado Hills join community leaders on the Capitol's west steps at 2 p.m. to highlight the case of Seth Parker, who says two men shouted gay slurs at him before badly beating him in the parking lot of an Elk Grove bowling alley Sunday.

TOUR: Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, joins state Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro and others in the south state for another of the state party's "California Speaks Out" town halls. The event, co-sponsored by KCBQ-AM, starts at 7 p.m. at Hawthorne CAT Power Systems, 8050 Othello Ave., San Diego.

PHOTO CREDIT: Shen Buechler, an inmate at Folsom State Prison, works on measuring an engine Wednesday, February 24, 2010, at the prison's auto mechanic's class.

Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/06/am-alert-california-prisons-adam-gelb.html#ixzz1OvpDE3sZ

The Role of the Prison Guards Union in California’s Troubled Prison System

by Tim Kowal on June 6, 2011

Jailing is big business. California spends approximately $9 billion a year on its correctional system, and hosts one in seven of the nation’s prisoners. It has the largest prison population of any state. The number of correctional facilities, the amount of compensation for their unionized staffs, and the total cost of incarcerating a prisoner in the state—$44,563 a year—have exploded over the past 30 years. Over that same period, the quality of the state’s prison system declined precipitously. From the 1940s to the 1960s, California’s correctional system was the envy of the nation: Its wardens held advanced degrees in social work and wrote groundbreaking studies on prisoner reform and reducing recidivism. “California was the model of good correctional management and inmate programming,” says Joan Petersilia in California’s Correctional Paradox of Excess and Deprivation, 37 Crime & Just. 207, 209 (2008), “and its practices profoundly influenced American corrections for over 30 years.”


By the 1980s, however, California began radically reforming its prison system. An incarceration rate that had held to 100 to 150 per 100,000 Californians prior to 1980 spiked to over 450 by the year 2000. The prison population surged from less than 25,000 in 1980 to more than 168,000 in 2009. The state’s prison budget swelled to meet the needs of the more than six-fold population increase. Between 1980 and 2000, California built 23 new prisons. New guards were needed to staff the new facilities, increasing their number from approximately 5,600 to nearly 30,000 over the same period. Prior to construction, annual spending on the state’s correctional program amounted to about $675 million, or about 3% of California’s general fund. By 2008, spending topped $10 billion, and consumed almost 11.5% of the state’s general fund.

It still wasn’t enough, however, since spending on rehabilitation was systematically excised from the state’s correctional policy at the same time in around 1980. As a result, according to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002, California has the highest rate of recidivism in the nation:

Before the mid-1970s, most sentences were indeterminate, meaning that most inmates could get off much earlier than their original sentence if they completed vocational or academic classes in addition to good behavior.

The state replaced that system with one lacking an incentive for inmates to take classes or get counseling to help them prepare for life outside prison.

Now, virtually everyone released from prison spends three years on parole. Most – about 71 percent – end up back in prison within 18 months – the nation’s highest recidivism rate and nearly double the average of all other states.

According to data provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in 1977, parolees who were returned to prison or convicted of new crimes accounted for just 10% of California’s prison population. The percentage topped 20 only once prior to 1980. In 2009, however, the number was an alarming 77%, having held firm between the high 60s and low 80s since 1986.


The growth of California’s incarceration system, and the decline of its quality, tracks the accession to power of the state’s prison guards union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (“CCPOA”). The CCPOA has played a significant role in advocating pro-incarceration policies and opposing pro-rehabilitative policies in California. In 1980, CCPOA’s 5,600 members earned about $21,000 a year and paid dues of about $35 a month. After the rapid expansion of the prison population beginning in the 1980s, CCPOA’s 33,000 members today earn approximately $73,000 and pay monthly dues of about $80. These dues raise approximately $23 million each year, of which the CCPOA allocates approximately $8 million to lobbying. As Ms. Petersilia explains, “The formula is simple: more prisoners lead to more prisons; more prisons require more guards; more guards means more dues-paying members and fund-raising capability; and fund-raising, of course, translates into political influence.”

The CCPOA has used this political influence to advance a highly successful pro-incarceration agenda. Alexander Volokh writes in his article, Privatization and the Law and Economics of Political Advocacy, 66 Stanford Law Review 1197 (2008):

many of [CCPOA’s] contributions are directly pro-incarceration. It gave over $100,000 to California’s Three Strikes initiative, Proposition 184 in 1994, making it the second-largest contributor. It gave at least $75,000 to the opponents of Proposition 36, the 2000 initiative that replaced incarceration with substance abuse treatment for certain nonviolent offenders. From 1998 to 2000 it gave over $120,000 to crime victims’ groups, who present a more sympathetic face to the public in their pro-incarceration advocacy. It spent over $1 million to help defeat Proposition 66, the 2004 initiative that would have limited the crimes that triggered a life sentence under the Three Strikes law. And in 2005, it killed Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan to “reduce the prison population by as much as 20,000, mainly through a program that diverted parole violators into rehabilitation efforts: drug programs, halfway houses and home detention.”


Ms. Petersilia further observes that “CCPOA-sponsored legislation was successful more than 80 percent of the time” during the ‘80s and ‘90s, including most notably California’s aggressive three-strikes initiative passed in 1984. Following the 2010 elections, one CCPOA lobbyist boasted “we should be able to develop a good contract with this governor given the fiscal times the state’s in, and we should have no trouble getting it ratified. We have such good relationships, and we were right in so many races, that we’ve got a lot of friends over there.” Thus, while the state’s pro-incarceration laws swell union membership and dues revenue, the CCPOA is able to successfully lobby for more generous compensation for their membership. As of July 2006, the average CCPOA correctional officer earned $73,248 a year—more than the average salary of an assistant professor with a PhD at the University of California ($60,000 per year in 2006). With overtime, it is not uncommon for California correctional officers to earn over $100,000 a year. A Los Angeles Times investigation found that 6,000 correctional officers earned more than $100,000 in 2006, with hundreds earning more than legislators and other state officials.

Prison guards also enjoy pensions calculated using the favorable 3%-at-50 formula. An officer who retires at 50 takes as his pension a percentage of his last year’s salary equal to three times the number of years worked. (For example, an officer who retires at age 50 after 30 years on the job will receive 90% of his salary during retirement (3 x 30 years). More on this subject here.) Since the maximum retirement benefits are 90 percent, working past 30 years is basically working for free. Teachers, by contrast, receive a pension calculated as 2.5 percent of their salaries per year of employment at age 63.

As CCPOA member Lt. Kevin Peters observed, the union’s successful pro-incarceration policy results in more and better opportunities for union members:

You can get a job anywhere. This is a career. And with the upward mobility and rapid expansion of the department, there are opportunities for the people who are [already] correction staff, and opportunities for the general public to become correctional officers. We’ve gone from 12 institutions to 28 in 12 years, and with “Three Strikes” and the overcrowding we’re going to experience with that, we’re going to need to build at least three prisons a year for the next five years. Each one of those institutions will take approximately 1,000 employees.

The facts observed over the past 40 years suggests the cycle described by Ms. Petersilia is basically accurate: higher incarceration leads to greater union influence, which in turn leads to still higher incarceration, and thus higher union membership, revenues, and political influence. Whatever the initial causes of California’s prison problems, the prison guards’ institutional pro-incarceration and anti-rehabilitation agenda has calcified a broken correctional system.

Timeline of the CCPOA’s Influence in California’s Crime, Incarceration, and Rehabilitation Policies

To provide an understanding the CCPOA’s objectives in and influence over California’s prison system, it may be helpful to recite a brief history of the prison system since the CCPOA’s inception over 50 years ago:
■1957: California Correctional Officers Association (the predecessor to the CCPOA) is founded.
■1972: In its initial decades, the CCOA largely backed conservative political measures. For example, in 1972 the CCOA backed Prop 17, which amended the California Constitution reinstating capital punishment following the California Supreme Court decision in People v. Anderson, holding the death penalty violated the state constitutional prohibition against “cruel or unusual punishment.”
■1973: The CCOA reaches 3,200 members. It is still dwarfed by the 102,000 member California State Employees Association.
■1976: California becomes the second state after Maine to abolish indeterminate sentencing, which had explicitly embraced rehabilitation as a correctional goal and tied a prisoner’s release date to his or her rehabilitative progress.
■1978: Gov. Jerry Brown signs the Dills Act into law, giving public employees collective bargaining rights.
■1980: California has 12 prisons. Prison guards make approximately $21,000 per year.

■1980: Don Novey takes over as president of CCPOA; although no longer working in a prison, Novey continues to receive his $59,900 salary, in addition to his new $60,000 union chief salary.
■1983: By the end of Jerry Brown’s term as governor, total prison population increases by 9,899, from 24,471 to 34,640.
■1983: CCPOA successfully negotiates a 2.5% at 55 retirement package.
■1984: CCPOA membership swells to 10,000.
■1990: CCPOA contributes $1 million to Pete Wilson.
■1990: The CCPOA contributes over $80,000 to an unknown opponent of Senator John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, who led opposition to a prison-building bond as an assemblyman in 1990. The much more visible Vasconcellos only narrowly defeated the unknown CCPOA-backed candidate.
■1991: By the end of George Deukmejian’s term as governor, total prison population explodes by 62,669, from 34,640 to 97,309. The Corrections’ share of the General Fund saw an 81% increase over the past 8 years.
■July 1993: The CCPOA is one of the top 10 state political campaign contributors with more than $1 million in contributions, substantially to Republican candidates, including a challenger to an assemblyman who had repeatedly called for slowing growth in prison operating budgets.
■1992: Prison guards’ pay averages $45,000 per year.
■1994: With the help of CCPOA’s $101,000 support, Californians passed Proposition 184, the nation’s toughest three-strikes law mandating 25-years-to-life sentences for most felony offenders with two previous serious convictions.
■1995: States around the country spend more building prisons than colleges for the first time in history.
■1998: Don Novey, president of the CCPOA, contributes $2.1 million to the Gray Davis campaign.
■1998: The CCPOA donates a total of $5.3 million to legislative races, the Gray Davis campaign, and voter initiatives. It was the No. 1 donor to California legislative races at $1.9 million. It contributed $2.3 million into Davis’s campaign, placed television spots for Davis in the conservative Central Valley, and helped fund a bank of telephone callers before the election. The CCPOA contributed $3 million to Gray Davis during his term in office.
■1998: Since approximately 1980, California tripled its number of prisons and increased its inmate population to nearly 160,000 at 33 prisons and 38 work camps.
■1998: Gov. Pete Wilson, who receives $1.5 million in CCPOA contributions in 1998, vetoes pay raises for other state workers while CCPOA members obtain a 12% pay increase, bringing top pay from $46,200 to $50,820. State university instructors earn between $32,000 and $37,000. By the end of Pete Wilson’s term as governor in 1999, total prison population increased by 67,875, from 97,309 to an estimated 165,166.
■1999: After the Legislature approves a bill to establish a $1 million pilot program to provide alternative sentencing for some nonviolent parole offenders—estimated to save taxpayers $600 million a year—the CCPOA opposes the bill. Governor Gray Davis then vetoes the bill. The CCPOA also persuades Gov. Davis to close three privately run prisons, even though they housed inmates at substantially lower costs than state-run facilities.
■2000: The CCPOA contributes at least $75,000 to the opponents of Proposition 36, the 2000 initiative that replaced incarceration with substance abuse treatment for certain nonviolent offenders.
■2002: CCPOA contributes $1 million to Gray Davis’s campaign. The CCPOA contributes $200,000 to defeat Assemblyman Phil Wyman in 2002, an advocate of private prisons. The CCPOA negotiates an increase to prison guards’ pay estimated between 28% and 37%, at a price tag of $500 million per year. Senior guards earn $52,700 a year, compared to $30,000 for a senior supervisor in Texas. The California Legislature approves $170 million in extra prison spending. In addition to granting correctional officers a major boost in pay, the labor pact permitted officers to call in sick without a doctor’s note confirming the illness. With the new policy in place, prison officers called in sick 500,000 more hours in 2002 than in 2001, a 27% increase. "Our overtime would have been below 2001, or real close, had it not been for that 500,000-hour increase," said Wendy Still, the main budget analyst for the Department of Corrections. Corrections officers called in sick 27 percent more often last year than they did in 2001, for an additional 500,000 lost hours. More than a third of the overtime logged last year was to compensate for guards who called in sick, according to the Bureau of State Audits. The California Department of Finance requests $70 million to cover unexpected prison costs from 2001. In December, Gray Davis asks lawmakers for $10 billion in emergency cuts to other state programs.
■2003: Gray Davis asks the Legislature to approve another $150 million for prison system’s budget. The CCPOA contributes $25,000 to Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, a San Francisco Democrat, three months after giving $12,000 to Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga. CCPOA members receive a 7% raise, pushing average annual take-home pay to $64,000. California’s prison budget is estimated at $5.2 billion.
■2004: The CCPOA spends over $1 million to defeat Prop 66, the initiative that would have limited the crimes that triggered a life sentence under the Three Strikes law.
■2005: The CCPOA defeats Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan to “reduce the prison population by as much as 20,000, mainly through a program that diverted parole violators into rehabilitation efforts: drug programs, halfway houses and home detention.” Spending on California’s penal system constitutes approximately 7% of the state’s general funds. CCPOA membership reaches 26,000.
■2006: The average CCPOA correctional officer receives compensation worth $73,248 per year. Over 900 workers added $50,000 or more to their base salaries in overtime pay; over 1,600 officers’ total earnings topped $110,000. (Kathryne Tafolla Young, The Privatization of California Correctional Facilities: A Population-Based Approach, 18 Stan. L. & Pol’y Rev. 438, 441-42 (2007).)

■2007: Following a 2007 ruling requiring the state to fix its prison overcrowding problem, the Legislature passes a $3.5 billion bond package to finance the construction of new prisons, yet four years later not a single new facility has been built.
■2008: The CCPOA contributes $2 million to Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign. The CCPOA contributes $1 million against Prop 5, a measure to reduce prison overcrowding by providing treatment rather than prison sentences for nonviolent drug users.
■2011: Gov. Brown’s proposed Fiscal Year 2011-2012 budget funds the prison system $9.19 billion, nearly 7.2% of the entire state budget. It costs an average of $44,563 a year to house each of California’s approximately 158,000 inmates in a system at roughly 200% of capacity. The national average is $28,000.

By 2011, CCPOA members are among the most generously compensated public workers in the state, even while their union resists policy changes to bring prison overcrowding, recidivism, and costs under control. As observed by Rich Tatum, a 33-year prisons veteran and president of the California Correctional Supervisors Organization, “It does seem at times like the union is running the department.” John Irwin, a retired professor and commentator of California’s correctional system, worries that “the wardens don’t feel they have much control of what goes on. The cliques – mostly led by sergeants – at the prisons are very strong, and the union, of course, backs them up when they get into trouble.”

That the CCPOA effectively wields so much governmental power explains how the misconduct of their members goes unchecked, and reported sexual assault, unreasonable use of tasers and pepper spray, hitting with flashlights and batons, punching and kicking, slurs and racial epithets, among others, go uninvestigated. According to the 138-page opinion in Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F. Supp. 1146 (N.D.Cal. 1995), “The court finds that supervision of the use of non-lethal force at Pelican Bay is strikingly deficient,” and “It is clear to the Court that while the IAD [Internal Affairs Division] goes through the necessary motions, it is invariably a counterfeit investigation pursued with one outcome in mind: to avoid finding officer misconduct as often as possible. As described below, not only are all presumptions in favor of the officer, but evidence is routinely strained, twisted or ignored to reach the desired result.” The court held that the prison guards and officials engaged in unnecessary infliction of pain and use of excessive force, and violated the Eighth Amendment, among other things. According to testimony in Madrid, from 1989 to 1994 officers in California’s state prisons shot and killed more than 30 inmates. By contrast, in all other state and federal prisons nationally only 6 inmates were killed in the same period-and 5 of those were shot while attempting to escape.

Compounding this misconduct is the systemic lack of transparency preventing the public from knowing the full extent of the guards’ abuses. Union members, for example, employ a “code of silence” to squelch evidence of misconduct:
Even if the CDC were more thorough in its investigation of officer misconduct, it would have to overcome the membership’s last line of defense-a widely accepted code of silence. In the Madrid case, Judge Henderson referred to the "undeniable presence of a ‘code of silence’ … designed to encourage prison employees to remain silent regarding the improper behavior of their fellow employees, particularly where excessive force has been alleged." 889 F Supp at 1157. Novey, asked in the 1998 state Senate hearings if he would say such a code existed, replied, "I wouldn’t totally say that…. But I will attest that there are pockets [of the code], and our job’s to help weed out those pockets."

As the Madrid ruling chillingly observes, “Certainly, much has transpired at Pelican Bay California state prison of which the Court will never know."

Concurrent with the abuses described in Madrid, similar abuses were under investigation at Corcoran State Prison concerning guards using firearms to break up fist fights:


The investigations at Corcoran State Prison eventually led to the federal indictment of eight officers for allegedly staging "blood sport" fights between inmates that occurred in the security housing unit in 1994. Before the trial, the CCPOA financed an infomercial in 1999 about the tough working conditions at Corcoran. Thomas E. Quinn, a private investigator in Fresno who produced a documentary video showing some of the fights, says the union’s infomercial showed "prison guards as neighbors, and prisoners as the scum of the earth." Broadcast by local television stations prior to jury selection, the ad concluded with the tag line "Corcoran officers: They walk the toughest beat in the state."

Although prosecutors expressed concern about the ads to the trial judge, they didn’t attempt to stop the broad-casts. The jury eventually acquitted the eight guards of all charges. Immediately after the verdict, some jurors joined the defendants for an impromptu celebration.

Tame by comparison, the investigation earlier this year into prison guards who smuggled 10,000 cellphones to inmates in 2010—including one guard who obtained $150,000 through the illegal practice—hardly made a blip on anyone’s radar. Nor did this or the union’s many other abuses prevent it from successfully negotiating a vacation benefits package with Gov. Brown recently for, among other perks, eight weeks of vacation per year, additional time upon gaining seniority, and the right to cash out an unlimited amount of accrued vacation time upon retirement at final pay scale. Although the CCPOA insists the deal simply pays its members for the vacation days they were unable to take due to staffing shortages, the CCPOA itself is a significant contributor to the overcrowding and budgetary constraints that led to these shortages.

As a result of the overcrowding and dismal conditions in California’s prisons, the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Plata recently ordered the state to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of design capacity by releasing approximately 37,000 prisoners. For California to comply with the high Court’s order, however, it must contend with a prison guards union at the height of its power. The state, on the one hand, must negotiate under a strict time table set by the Supreme Court while observing the constitutional protections of its prisoners and the interests of the public. The CCPOA, on the other hand, has the power to oust those elected officials who fail to put the union’s interests first. It’s a dangerous stand off, set in motion in part by Gov. Brown himself with the Dills Act in 1978. There is some poetic justice that, more than three decades later, it is Brown who must confront the powerful special interest he helped create.

Tim Kowal is an attorney practicing in Orange County, California, Vice President of the Orange County Federalist Society, and contributor to UnionWatch. The views expressed on this blog are his own. You can follow this blog via RSS, Facebook, or Twitter. Email is welcome at timkowal at gmail.com. Previous posts are still available at the old blog.

Is CA’s 3-Strikes Good or Bad Law? State & Local Officials Contemplate the Question

WitnessLA.com » Blog Archive » Is CA’s 3-Strikes Good or Bad Law? State & Local Officials Contemplate the Question

May 13th, 2011 by Celeste Fremon

Last week two dozen California reporters—myself included—met with state and local officials and criminal justice experts on the USC campus to talk about California’s Three Strikes law. The idea of the symposium was to encourage more informed and nuanced reporting on criminal justice issues in general, and the Three Strikes law in particular.

The event was sponsored by New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice and conceived by Stephen Handelman, the Center’s director, and my pal Joe Domanick, who is the center’s associate director and an expert on the Three Strikes law, since he wrote the most authoritative book on the topic.

For two full days straight, there were panels and Q & A sessions with such people as Matthew Cate, the head of the California Department of Corrections, LA District Attorney, Steve Cooley, Civil Rights lawyer Connie Rice, San Francisco DA, George Gascon, LA’s new head Public Defender Ron Brown, former state senators Tom Hayden and Gloria Romero, plus a pile of academics and advocates from both ends of the political spectrum. There were also two men who had been put away for life by the law, but who had managed to get their cases reconsidered.

Unlike with most such gatherings, many of the officials and experts who came to be on panels, stayed on to become part of the small intense audience.

In broad strokes, the discussion focused on what good or harm the law had done, and what ought to be done about it now. Should it be left as is? Modified? Or should it be done away with?

Most who came seemed eager to share what they knew and the opinions among those who have dealt the most closely with the law were often surprising.

But, before we get to that, a little history on the law itself:
MORE:WitnessLA.com » Blog Archive » Is CA’s 3-Strikes Good or Bad Law? State & Local Officials Contemplate the Question

Guarding Against Reform

Guarding Against Reform « Zócalo Public Square

CA's Corrections Officers Need to Let Some of Their Charges Go

by Joshua Page

California’s prisons provide an apt metaphor for the state’s broken politics. Almost everyone knows the $10 billion correctional system is unsustainable and must be cut, and yet the issue is so controlled by vested interests that nothing much changes. It’s a case study in how political disengagement – the “why bother” syndrome that afflicts Californians when confronted with any number of daunting issues – tends to carry the day.

Contracting the prison population requires shortening prison and parole terms, increasing alternatives to imprisonment, and reserving costly prison beds for the most serious offenders. Sophisticated research and the recent experiences of other states (like New York, which decreased its prison population by 20 percent) show that these measures can be implemented without jeopardizing public safety.

The time is ripe to downsize California’s correctional system. For starters, the state is over $26 billion in debt – it simply can’t afford its prison system. Moreover, federal judges have ruled that the Golden State must cut about 40,000 inmates from its overcrowded prisons. Public opinion polls indicate that Californians are tiring of their state’s über-tough approach to crime and drug addiction. So who stands in the way of the mighty alliance of fiscal necessity, the federal bench and public opinion?

Enter the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, known as CCPOA. Established in 1982, this prison officers’ union became an influential political player in the 1990s. Now, alongside crime victims’ groups it helped create and continues to fund, the CCPOA greatly influences the fate of major penal policy proposals. The union has defeated critical sentencing reform initiatives that might shrink California’s bloated correctional system.

In 2004, the CCPOA organized and helped finance the opposition to Proposition 66, which would have softened the edges of the state’s extremely sharp “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law. In 2008, it bankrolled the successful effort to defeat Proposition 5, a wide-ranging initiative meant to reduce the number of drug offenders behind bars. Most recently, the union helped torpedo a legislative initiative to establish an independent commission with the authority to change sentencing laws. When it comes to serious sentencing reform, the CCPOA and its allies remain major obstacles.

As odd as it might seem for prison officers to play a decisive role in shaping the criminal justice system of a state of some 35 million people, policymakers have no choice but to deal with the CCPOA. But they should do so in a more adept manner.

First, policymakers should address the union’s legitimate concerns. Prison officers understandably worry that downsizing the correctional system will put them out of work. Thanks largely to their effective union, these officers have solid, middle-class jobs with good pay, good benefits, and good retirement packages. California officers make between $45,000 and $73,000 a year before overtime and other incentives. As the manufacturing sector declines, “prison officer” is one of the few remaining occupations providing upward social mobility for people who lack advanced degrees. This is especially true in the rural areas in which many prisons are located. Officers and their families, then, are justified in thinking that major reforms might close one of the few remaining paths they have into the middle class.

Policymakers must make good faith efforts to protect these workers as they reshape the correctional system. Prison workforces should be decreased by natural attrition whenever possible; positions should be shed through retirement or voluntary termination. Because the prisons are currently understaffed, the closing of some facilities needn’t translate into widespread layoffs. The state might set up retraining programs to help officers find new work within or outside of the prison system. The CCPOA would be much more likely to support reform measures if it could protect its members’ jobs along the way, or at least be persuaded that its worst-case fears are unfounded.

Securing jobs won’t be enough. Another important point to consider is that the union’s support for laws like “Three Strikes” is not just about gaining members and job security. It’s also ideological. Union leaders and many members believe in these policies. Therefore, policymakers (particularly the governor) must negotiate aggressively but productively, not only on wages and benefits, but also on substantive issues. California’s leaders should make implicit or explicit deals, using wages, benefits, and work-related rules and practices as bargaining chips with the CCPOA during collective bargaining. Unless the union agrees not to oppose major sentencing and prison reforms (and that includes not financing its allied organizations’ efforts to quash the reforms), the state should not support the union’s contract or legislative proposals.

If the CCPOA refrains from opposing sentencing reforms, it should be rewarded with fair contracts that further professionalize prison officer work, improve wages and benefits, and strengthen job security. Put simply, there should be incentives for cooperation—not just disincentives for non-cooperation.

Evidently, the Brown administration used this strategy in its recent negotiations with the CCPOA. As has been widely reported, the governor and the union have reached a tentative contract agreement. Republican legislators and newspaper editorial boards have argued that this deal will not save enough money or return enough workplace control to management – some have even called it a “sweetheart deal.” In response to the criticism, Brown has claimed that he did not seek more drastic concessions from the union, at least in part, because the CCPOA did not actively oppose his criminal justice realignment plan to make counties (rather than the state) responsible for incarcerating low-level offenders and supervising most parolees. (The policy will not go into effect unless Brown gets his tax measures approved.) If implemented, the plan will decrease the number of prison officers and parole agents – hence, it’s not surprising that union leaders are taking heat for not opposing the plan. Nevertheless, the CCPOA finally has a contract, and, given the current economic environment, budget shortfalls, and rampant anti-union sentiment, it’s a solid one.

In a perfect world, taxpayers wouldn’t need to offer carrots to a public employee union to reform a state’s criminal justice system. But California politics, to put it mildly, is not quite a perfect world, and unless campaign financing and plenty of other structural matters are radically altered, the governor must get the CCPOA’s buy-in to downsize prisons.

Brown’s realignment proposal is projected to reduce the state prison population by upwards of 40,000. Although it would alleviate overcrowding and satisfy the federal courts, it would not necessarily shrink the overall correctional population (instead it would simply shift state prisoners to the counties). Truly shrinking the system still requires sentencing reform. Neither Brown nor the legislature has shown any willingness to shorten prison sentences or increase alternatives to imprisonment, but if they do take up serious sentencing reform, they will again have to deal with the CCPOA and its allies. By addressing union members’ fears, policymakers can soften their resistance. And while a smaller prison system will eventually lead to fewer officers (and union members), it will also benefit those who continue to toil on the tiers and on the yards.

Contracting the penal population will decrease tension, violence, and chaos behind the walls, making the prison beat less “tough” for officers and prisoners alike. Despite the zero-sum calculations of so many, cutting corrections and helping officers are necessary and compatible goals.

Joshua Page is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California (Oxford University Press, 2011).

*Photo courtesy of Dana Gonzales.

Mom Wonders: Is My Son’s Arrest A Good Thing?

Coerced Treatment For Drug Addiction

by recoveryhelpdesk on May 1, 2011 ·

Will your son’s arrest ultimately turn out to be a good thing? Not likely.

I certainly understand how a mother could feel a sense of relief when her son is arrested. Even her son may feel a certain sense of relief.

Finally something might actually derail the runaway train. But what about the train wreck that follows?

For the last 10 years, I’ve run an incarceration-prevention program for people living with opiate dependence. Our goal is to help people find a path to recovery that does not pass through the jailhouse door.

Not only is it possible to find a path to recovery that does not pass through the jailhouse door, but passing through the jailhouse door reduces your chances of long term recovery success.

Sure, arrest and the threat of incarceration can result in a new focus on the need for change, and provide motivation for change. But this particular path to focus and motivation risks some devastating side effects.

There are other ways to elicit focus on the need for change and build motivation for change. Ways that are more effective over the long term and less harmful.

I fear that as a society we are too ready to use the cudgel of coerced treatment. We’ve talked ourselves into believing that incarceration is a therapeutic response to addiction. But the many-forked path through the criminal justice system often leads every which way but stable, long-term recovery.

I think we would be smart to be wary of a system of coerced treatment for addiction through the threat of incarceration –just as we would be wary of a system of coerced treatment for any other health issue with a behavioral component such as obesity, smoking, diabetes or heart disease.

I think we should recognize and be wary of the “enablers” of this system:

1. Desperate parents, families and communities;

2. Lazy and unskilled treatment providers who bottom feed on coerced treatment;

3. Politicians who get more political mileage out of putting money into the criminal justice system instead of the drug treatment system; and

4. Unjustified stigma against drug users that grants social permission to incarcerate rather than provide effective treatment.

I feel no sense of relief when a client is arrested. I recognize that the job of helping that person build a safe and sustainable recovery just got a lot harder.

“I’m never coming back here again.”

“I’m never going to use again.”

“Getting arrested saved my life, if I wasn’t here I’d be dead by now.”

I hear these statements often from clients I visit in jail. I recognize the sincerity behind the statements. After many years of experience, I also recognize that these kinds of sincere statements are often not only not actually accurate, but almost the opposite of the reality of the situation.

Once in jail, more likely to be back in jail again.

Once in jail, less likely to be able to achieve the conditions of stability necessary to achieve long term recovery.

Incarceration is more likely to put a life at risk. Getting effective treatment would have been more likely to save a life.

Getting sucked into the criminal justice system most often delays recovery, complicates recovery and destabilizes recovery. Most people don’t get treatment in jail, and don’t get linked to treatment after release from jail. Instead, statistics show that a large percentage of fatal overdoses happen right after release from incarceration.

There is a basic human impulse to try to make sense of bad experiences by finding the good that might give the experience a positive meaning. We do this with war, serious illness, and even the tragic death of a loved one. It’s a healthy coping mechanism.

It’s healthy to focus on the good. It’s healthy to take the bad things that happen to us and weave them into our personal narratives in way that gives them positive and hopeful meaning. But as a society, it’s more healthy to recognize that bad things are bad.

Incarceration as a solution to addiction is BAD.

The Failed Drug War Has Created a Human Rights Nightmare -- How Can This Happen in Our Country and Go Virtually Undiscussed?

If we fail to commit ourselves to ending mass incarceration, future generations will judge us harshly.

So much about our racial reality today is little more than a mirage. The promised land of racial equality wavers, quivers just out of our reach in the barren desert of our new, "colorblind" political landscape. It looks so good from a distance: Barack Obama, our nation's first black president, standing in the Rose Garden behind a podium looking handsome, dignified, and in charge. Flip the channel and there's Michelle Obama, a brown-skinned woman, digging a garden in the backyard of the White House -- not as a servant or a maid -- but as the first lady, schooling the nation on better health and the need to be good stewards of our planet. Flip the channel again and there's the whole Obama family exiting Air Force One, waving to the crowd, descending the flight of stairs -- a gorgeous black family living in the White House, ruling America, cheered by the world.
More....
By Michelle Alexander /Alternet / April 28, 2011

Right-winger + hard time = compassion?

Saturday, Apr 9, 2011 14:01
By Justin Elliott

"....While incarcerated, he learned "of the realities of street level American race relations; of the pathology of incorrigible criminals; and of the wasted opportunities for the reintegration of many of these people into society. I saw at close range the failure of the U.S. War on Drugs, with absurd sentences, (including 20 years for marijuana offences, although 42% of Americans have used marijuana and it is the greatest cash crop in California.)...."

more...

The Root: We Can't Afford To Not Fix Justice System

Statistics released by the U.S. Bureau of Justice and analyzed by Ohio State law professor Michelle Alexander show that, as of 2008, more African American men are in jail today than were slaves in 1850.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is president and CEO of the NAACP.

Lateefah Simon is executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reforming the nation's criminal-justice system is one of the most urgent civil rights issues of our time. One shocking fact illustrates why: More African-American men are entangled in the criminal-justice system today than were enslaved in 1850.

How did we get here? The rise in America's penchant for punishment can be traced as far back as the 1964 presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, each of whom made law and order a defining plank of his platform.

President Richard Nixon continued the trend, framing Democrats as "soft on crime" and pushing for tough law-enforcement policies in opposition to President Johnson's credo of tackling crime through a "war on poverty." "Doubling the conviction rate in this country would do more to cure crime in America than quadrupling the funds for [Hubert] Humphrey's war on poverty," Nixon told voters.
more....http://www.npr.org/2011/04/07/135203031/the-root-we-cant-afford-to-not-fix-justice-system
..Benjamin Todd Jealous and Lateefah Simon, NPR

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Hard Times after Hard Time for the Formerly Incarcerated

Once the cell door slams shut, a life is severed. For the individual, a prison sentence imposes a "social death" in the form of isolation from family, social networks, and the economy. Less visible is the collective punishment that prison metes out against the families on the outside, broken up by the state and shattered by economic crisis.

more...Hard Times after Hard Time for the the Formerly Incarcerated

Four Corners and Nowhere to Turn - San Diego Magazine - September 2010 - San Diego, California

Ex-offender programs and substance-abuse treatment faccilities — halfway houses — help provide the transition into society that keeps recently released prisoners from reverting to previous criminal behavior. But state budget cuts threaten their continued existence.

State agrees to discuss prison lockdowns with rights group

By Michael Montgomery, California Watch -- Facing a threatened legal battle over alleged racial discrimination, California prison officials have agreed to meet with the Prison Law Office over the department’s controversial use of lockdowns on general population inmates. In a July 17 letter to the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Matt Cate, the Prison Law Office threatened to sue the department over lockdowns that singled out entire races for punishment – sometimes for months. "The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is working with the Prison Law Office on the issue they identified," CDCR spokesperson Terry Thornton said..
READ More....

1/5 Of Inmates Get Drug Treatment; Total May Drop In Budget Crunch

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 4:50 am

Of the 2.3 million inmates in the U.S., more than half have a history of substance abuse and addiction, says Newsweek. Not all those inmates are imprisoned on drug-related charges (although drug arrests have been rising steadily since the early 1990s; there were nearly 200,000 in 2007). Josiah Rich, a professor of medicine and community health at Brown University, is worried that, by refusing or neglecting to provide treatment to these addicts, many U.S. prisons are missing the best chance to cure them—and in the process to cut down on future crime.

Treatment can reduce recidivism rates from 50 percent to something more like 20 percent, yet it is not widely provided. “Our system has taken the highest-risk and most ill people and put them in a place where they have constitutionally mandated health care,“ Rich says. “What a great opportunity to make a difference. Are we just trying to punish people? Or are we trying to rehabilitate people? What do we want out of this?” The National Institute on Drug Abuse says that just one fifth of inmates get some form of treatment. That number may be lower in the near future: tight budgets are forcing many states to reduce or close existing treatment programs. Kansas and Pennsylvania have already done so; California and Texas may may follow suit.

Link: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/29/the-case-for-treating-drug-addicts-in-prison.html

Are Prisons Really Dangerous Places to Work?

Are Prisons Really Dangerous Places to Work?

by Stan Moody

June 21, 2010 @ 01:17PM PT
Topics: Prison Reform

What do you think the most dangerous job in America is? If you answered 'being a prison guard,' you'd be wrong. Though the corrections industry has sold the public on the danger of being a prison guard, the truth is that prisons are crushingly boring places.

That's because they're designed to be efficient, unchanging systems that maintain order while both staff and prisoners do their time. (That might explain prison guards' high rate of addiction and divorce.)

I should know — until recently, I worked as a chaplain in a Maine prison.

During a recent interview, I was asked if I thought the spate of deaths within Maine's solitary prison cells (three within the past year) would prompt future reforms. My answer was a categorical “No.” Unfortunately, the public has already spoken. Mental hospitals have largely been closed, leaving psychiatric wards, jails and prisons as the remaining option for many in need. Meanwhile, thanks to urban renewal, those without mental, financial or family resources to defend themselves have been rendered disposable.

Read More;

I AM THE DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE

Justice Advocates to Governor: Cut Waste, Not Effective Programs, from Bloated Corrections Budget

For Immediate Release: May 13, 2010
(http://tinyurl.com/29fc5ar)

SAN FRANCISCO—As spending on California’s massive prison system continues unabated, Governor Schwarzenegger’s office has declared that the revised budget to be released tomorrow will propose “absolutely terrible cuts.” The American Civil Liberties Union, Drug Policy Alliance and Ella Baker Center for Human Rights call on the Governor to choose three effective, budget-saving reforms over wasteful corrections spending.

Californians are already living with over-crowded classrooms, higher fees for college, bare bones health care, and fewer public services. Meanwhile, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) overspent its budget again – by nearly $500 million so far. In addition, a recent investigation by the Sacramento Bee brought to light disturbing allegations of abuse, racial bias and misconduct by prison guards, raising more questions about CDCR’s commitment to rehabilitation and stewardship of public funds.

So that public safety dollars are used wisely to protect California communities, we recommend the following common-sense, budget-saving reforms:

•Reserve prison for serious offenses: Two-thirds of California inmates are in prison for non-violent, property or drug offenses. Prison cells are expensive and should be reserved for people who commit serious crimes. Those convicted of petty drug and property crimes should be dealt with at the local level. Three changes can achieve this: (1) people found in possession of small amounts of drugs should not be sent to prison; (2) certain property crimes that can be charged as either a felony or misdemeanor should be treated as misdemeanors only; and (3) the dollar threshold defining when property theft is a felony should be adjusted based on inflation. These changes have been endorsed by the Governor, the CDCR and the Legislative Analyst’s Office, and would save $292 million annually.


•Ensure fair sentencing and rehabilitation for youth: Youth in California serve the longest average sentences in the nation. Currently, the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) has the ability to keep youth locked up longer by giving them "time adds" based on behavior. Time adds account for one third of all custody time in DJJ. Assembly Member Nancy Skinner's bill, AB 999, would eliminate time adds and establish an incentive program in which young people can earn credits for program participation. AB 999 would cut state costs by over $130 million and would lead to further facility closures by reducing the number of young people in state custody.

•Restore rehabilitation programs at the state and local level: Last year, the CDCR cut $260 million from rehabilitation and treatment programs in prison. This year, the Legislature has threatened to eliminate all funding for Prop 36 drug treatment programs. These cuts will only lead to more incarceration. Instead, the Legislature should invest $30 million in available federal Byrne Grants –funds available for drug treatment – into Prop 36 programs. Criminal justice experts have all agreed: real, effective rehabilitation for non-violent drug and property offenders reduces crime and ultimately reduces corrections spending. According to UCLA research, every dollar invested in Prop 36 cuts state costs by $2 to $4 – primarily in incarceration costs.

All Californians should demand a just budget: Sacramento must end the waste in corrections, ensure that public safety dollars are used effectively, and protect all Californian communities by preserving funding for education, rehabilitation, and core social services.

CONTACTS:
Natasha Minsker, ACLU of Northern California, 415-621-2493
Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, Drug Policy Alliance, 213-291-4190
Kris Lev-Twombly, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, 510-428-3939

05.04.2010 - Downsizing the prison-industrial complex

California's obsession with incarceration — at $50K a year per adult, $250K per juvenile — is unsustainable, says criminologist Barry Krisberg

By Cathy Cockrell, NewsCenter | 04 May 2010

BERKELEY — Barry Krisberg joined Berkeley Law's Center for Criminal Justice in January as a distinguished senior fellow and lecturer-in-residence. A well-known researcher and advocate for juvenile-justice reform, he served as president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for more than 25 years (1983-2009). Krisberg has been tapped by state governments and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and monitor aspects of the correctional system. He led the 2003 investigation in California of what is now the Division of Juvenile Justice. After the panel issued a devastating report, Krisberg was asked to help monitor state compliance with the resulting consent decree, a role he continues to play today.
More.....
05.04.2010 - Downsizing the prison-industrial complex

The Drug War: A War on Women and Their Families | | AlterNet

The Drug War: A War on Women and Their Families AlterNet
Since 1977, the rate of female imprisonment has increased by nearly 800% and is still rising -- much of it attributable to the war on drugs.
April 5, 2010

The newest victims of the war on drugs are women and if Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske was sincere when he said that the war on drugs is not a war on the people of this country then it is time to evaluate how our policies affect the women of this country. Since 1977, the rate of female imprisonment has increased by nearly 800% and is still rising.

DA tries to seize inmate drug money

Monday, April 5, 2010

 I have three thoughts.. (notwithstanding the "forfeiture" discussion..)

 *YEARS to get a grip on the fact that an inmate with $25,000 on his books is odd?

*NO pending criminal cases? WOW, this guy was either invisible or guards are turning their heads.
*Hello! The drug trade in prison is big business....

  DA tries to seize inmate drug money

 By Nick Grube, Daily Triplicate -- The Del Norte County District Attorney’s Office recently began asset forfeiture proceedings against a high-ranking Mexican Mafia gang member who is currently being housed inside Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit. According to court records, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation seized more than $26,000 held in inmate Danny Roman’s prison trust account after an investigation determined he allegedly received much of the money as a result of gang and drug activity.