In California, we’re also feeling the pressures of budget problems – but prisons here aren’t empty; they’re chock full. So is it possible that prison closure is in California’s future? KALW’s criminal justice reporter Rina Palta reports.
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HOLLY KERNAN: So Rina, let’s talk first about the national context. Is closing prisons relatively new for the U.S.?
RINA PALTA: There’s no doubt that for the last few decades, the U.S. has been in the mode of building prisons to house a rapidly growing prison population. Some of that has to do with crime rates. A lot has to do with harsh penalties for drug-related crimes and longer prison sentences in general. California has been something of a leader in this department. A rather telling fact is that in the first century or so of its existence, the state of California built 12 prisons. In the last three decades, the state
has built 43 prisons and prison camps. Now, we’re starting to see that building boom start to wind down nationwide. Violent crime is down, prison populations are shrinking through reforms, and states are looking to save money by shutting down these really expensive facilities that they no longer need.
KERNAN: So where is California in that? Obviously we’re experiencing budget cuts and we’re experiencing prison overcrowding, so it seems like we’re already short on space to house offenders. Is it possible that the state might close a prison?
PALTA: That’s true, we are in an overcrowded state in our prisons and we’re under a federal order to reduce our prisons by about 30,000 inmates over the next few years. But, the state is planning on doing that through a process that they call “realignment.” I asked David Muhammad, the Chief of Probation in Alameda County to explain realignment:
DAVID MUHAMMAD: Starting October 1, people newly convicted of a non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual offense can never go to state prison. That means that about 30,000 people, over the next three years, who would have gone to prison, will now serve their time in county jails. That’ll free
up prison space in the state system, and men’s prisons particularly will slowly become less crowded. What’s really interesting is that this reform could have a dramatic effect on women’s prisons – they could be left half empty. Here’s San Francisco’s Chief of Adult Probation, Wendy Still.
WENDY STILL: There will absolutely be a higher percentage of women that will be impacted by this reform and the reason is there’s a higher percentage of women who are incarcerated for these low-level crimes. So I’d venture to say that there’s probably going to be a minimum of 45% to 50% of their population that would decrease. They certainly will decrease enough to close a prison.
KERNAN: So Rina, does that mean it’ll happen?
PALTA: It’s not clear yet. Representatives from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation have been talking with local officials down in Chowchilla, a Central Valley town that houses two of the state’s three women’s prisons. Those local officials say that CDCR has given them two
options: they can either convert a prison to a men’s facility, or they can shut down a prison. The community is not really excited about either option.
But reformers are really starting to latch onto the possibility of closure. Tim Silard, the president of the Rosenburg Foundation in San Francisco, is helping lead the charge.
TIM SILARD: California has more than 30 adult prisons across the state and spends an enormous amounts of money to keep those prison systems going, so our hope is that the combined impact of realignment and some other reasonable reforms, taking on what has been done to great effect in other
states, can mean we can start shutting down prisons permanently in California. And start with those two women’s facilities.
KERNAN: So, Rina, we’ve talked before about how counties are scrambling to absorb these prisoners, and it’s still unclear how some will manage. But putting the county concerns aside, it seems that a potential benefit of realignment for reformers like Silard is the closure of a women’s prison.
PALTA: Yes, because for one, it would mean putting a damper on the fastest growing prison population in the state.
KERNAN: Women PALTA: Women. Women are the fastest growing prison population in the California and as Silard points out, a large percentage of women in prison are mothers of young children. Making a commitment to keeping these women, if they’re non-violent drug and property offenders, which they mostly are, on the local level also means keeping them closer to their kids and maybe keeps some of these kids out of foster care. Silard says there are also major financial savings.
SILARD: If we could close those down, we’d see a savings of close to $300 million a year. So we’re talking about a savings of $300 billion over the next 10 years.
KERNAN: So is there any opposition to shutting down a prison in the community of Chowchilla?
PALTA: Absolutely. We’re talking about 1,000 jobs in a rural community that’s highly dependent on prisons for the local economy. The truth is, the state has primarily built prisons in rural areas, where there really aren’t that many other jobs. And if those prisons go away, it could be devastating for a place like Chowchilla. New York actually is having similar issues right now. They cut their prison population heavily and have been trying to close unused prisons for years. Only recently, Governor Cuomo there was able to push through some closures. And part of the reason is he’s offering
economic development grants to towns with closing prisons. I asked Silard about this economic issue and here’s what he had to say.
SILARD: But we know that taking that same $300 million and investing that in other areas of our state budget, can and will produce far more jobs than what are produced through the prison system. The prison system is an enormously costly way of doing business and actually not a terrific job creator. So there are a lot of other ways of doing that.
KERNAN: So when will we know what CDCR decides?
PALTA: According to local officials, there’s a sort of ultimatum on the table: convert or close. But at the moment, there’s no firm timetable. So we’ll see, going forward, as this issue gains a little more momentum, what the public reaction is. At the very least, this is going to be a referendum on where the California public stands on the issue of truly downscaling the prison system.
*For more on the state’s plans to reduce the prison population, visit KALW’s criminal justice blog, the
Informant
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Emily Harris
Statewide Coordinator
1322 Webster St. #210
Oakland, CA 94612
510-435-1176
Californians United for a Responsible Budget
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