At the Crossroads

Written by: Craig Gilmore

In recent years, you hear a lot more about America’s crazy and destructive prison policies everywhere — on TV, radio talk shows, newspapers and online. Everyone knows that the USA locks up our residents at ten or more times the rate of other industrialized countries. Californians know that the incredible growth of our state’s prison system over the past 30 years has bankrupted the state, and by drawing funds away from public education, has dropped our schools from the best in the country to among the worst.

Well, everyone except, it appears, those in Sacramento responsible for running this state.

California is at a crossroads. One road leads towards building tens of thousands more prison cells and increasing the numbers of residents who are immiserated by prisons. The other road leads us towards reducing the numbers of people in prison and restoring funds stripped from public education, public health & mental health, Healthy Families and other crucial programs.

Fast Approaching

Two lawsuits brought by people locked in California prisons have forced the hands of the governor, the legislators and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Federal courts have ruled in Plata v. Schwarzenegger and Coleman v. Schwarzenegger that California’s prisons are so crowded that medical and mental health care that meets the Constitutional minimal requirements is not possible, so the Court has ordered California to reduce crowding in the prison system.

The order to reduce crowding is on hold while California appeals the decision to the Supreme Court. If the Federal Court decision is upheld, California will have two years to implement the plan.

Here’s where our out-of-touch Sacramento leadership comes in. You might think that the reasonable way to reduce crowding is to reduce the numbers of people in prison through sentencing reforms, parole reforms or increased credits. That, after all, is what other states have done successfully.

But no, not that simple. The Schwarzenegger plan is to build tens of thousands more prison and jail cells and to reduce crowding through expansion. The Legislature has passed AB900 that authorized the construction of up to 53,000 new prison and jail cells at a cost of over $7 billion.

Will it Work?

Thirty years ago, California held 22,500 people crammed into 12 prisons. In order to avoid the sort of Federal Court involvement we see today, then-Gov. Jerry Brown decided to expand the prison system to prevent illegally crowded conditions. Over the next 25 years, California built 23 new prisons and expanded capacity in the original 11. The prison population has grown from 22,500 to over 170,000. At the end of July, 2010 there were 156,420 locked in California prisons and almost 9,000 more who have been shipped to rented prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

What those in Sacramento seem not to have understood is that 30 years of prison expansion in California has not reduced crowding. What it has done is put more and more and more Californians behind bars.

The newest of California’s prisons is North Kern Valley State Prison, also known as Delano II, that opened in 2005. Look at this chart to see what effect the opening of a 5,160 bed prison had on crowding in the state’s other 32 prisons.

The CDCR’s population, which had remained fairly stable from 2000-2005 as the construction and opening of Delano II was delayed by a statewide grassroots campaign, increased by over 7,000 the year after a 5,160 bed prison was opened. Clearly, opening Delano II did not alleviate crowding in the CDCR.

The last 30 years have shown us that the CDCR, the Legislature and governors Democrat and Republican justify prison expansion by pointing to crowded and unsafe conditions, then immediately overfill the new cells.

The Cost of Failed Policy

Californians have paid a terrible price for 30 years of prison expansion. The worst of the costs have been paid by those who did the time, their children, and other family and loved ones. Individually the financial and emotional costs are usually a huge burden. Collectively they constitute a major force in the renewal of racism in employment, housing, education and other fields.

Even those who imagine their loved ones will never get caught up in the criminal justice system are paying. Thirty years ago, California spent 2 percent of our state spending on prisons. Now we spend over 10 percent. What has that shift in spending meant? It has meant the drop of California’s public schools from the best in the country to 48th or 49th. It has meant the cost of a University of California education increasing from a few hundred dollars a year in fees to many thousands of dollars a year. It has meant massive cuts to programs that help feed our children, provide health care to our seniors, protect us from environmental hazards and in general provide a social safety net that especially in hard economic times like these, more and more Californians need.

What Can We Do?

California has broken ground on only a few dozen of the new cells the CDCR and governor want to build. We can stop them from their folly and save our state from stealing billions more from education funding to waste on destroying more lives by locking up more people.

We need to be vocal in expressing the need for California to change direction. Our legislators need to hear it. So do our county boards of supervisors and city councils. So do our district attorneys and county sheriffs. So does anyone running for any of those offices, and our local, regional and statewide media, our religious institutions, our labor unions, our classmates, and carpoolers.

For more information, contact Californians United for a Responsible Budget through our webpage: www.curbprisonspending.org .