Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, November 28, 2011
Paul Sakuma / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mike Romano
As California braces for more budget cuts and moves forward with a plan to
reduce its prison population by 33,000 inmates, opponents of the state's
three strikes and you're out" law are preparing to ask voters to make major
changes to the harsh sentencing mandate.
Supporters of a proposed ballot measure say it would narrow the
three-strikes mandate to what voters wanted all along: a law that keeps
murderers, rapists and child molesters in prison for life and doesn't leave
low-level, nonviolent offenders languishing behind bars for decades.
The proposed law deals with what opponents see as the most egregious part of
three strikes - the provision allowing nonviolent offenders with two
previous strikes to be sentenced to prison for 25 years to life for any new
felony, regardless of whether the third crime was violent. But unlike
previous reform efforts, which have failed, the measure would not allow
anyone previously convicted of rape, murder, child molestation or other
heinous crimes to appeal their life terms.
It's sure to be controversial, however, because it would allow more than 4
000 felons whose third strike conviction was for a nonviolent crime to ask a
court for a new sentence.
No 'wasted resources'
"The original three-strikes law passed overwhelmingly, and what this does is
restore the original intent," political consultant Dan Newman said. "What
voters wanted in the first place was to make sure the truly most violent
monsters are locked up forever. ... What they don't want is wasted resources."
That means that under the proposed law, offenders such as Tulare County's
Shane Taylor could appeal their life sentences. Taylor, 42, is serving 25
years to life in prison for possessing a small amount of methamphetamine and
was eligible for a third strike because he had two previous burglary
convictions.
But Charley Charles, who was sentenced in 2007 to 25 years to life for two
weapons convictions in San Francisco, could not appeal his three-strikes
sentence because he was previously convicted of attempting to burn his
6-year-old son to death.
The three-strikes law was approved 17 years ago after the abduction and
slaying of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma by repeat felon Richard Allen
Davis. Considered one of the most severe sentencing mandates in the nation,
it requires enhanced punishment for repeat offenders.
Prison overcrowding
Those with one previous or serious violent felony conviction who are
convicted of a second felony face double the normal sentence. Those with two
previous violent or serious felonies can receive a 25-year-to-life sentence
for a third felony, even if it is for something minor such as drug
possession or shoplifting.
Supporters of the latest attempt to change the law say they have learned
from mistakes and note that the state's political climate might make a
difference now.
Years of budget shortfalls have led to major cuts in almost all state-funded
programs. California is under a U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce prison
crowding. And polls consistently show voters believe the state is spending
way too much money on incarceration and not enough on education and other
programs.
Political winds shift
In particular, Newman said, the authors took lessons from 2004's failed
Proposition 66, which also would have limited third strike convictions to
serious and violent crimes, but didn't disqualify offenders with previous
murder, rape or child molestation convictions. Opponents, including two
former governors and current Gov. Jerry Brown, used that to turn public
opinion against Prop. 66 in the last weeks of the campaign, saying it would
result in tens of thousands of dangerous criminals being released from
prison.
Newman said that this time around, supporters have spent a year conducting
polling and talking to a wide range of political players in the hope of
heading off that sort of opposition.
"I think we will end up having a broad, bipartisan coalition this time. We
will not allow this campaign to be pigeonholed, as past efforts have been,"
Newman said. "This will include law enforcement, Democrats, Republicans,
civil right leaders and taxpayer advocates."
If voters eventually approve the initiative, backers believe that about 3
000 of the 4,000 nonviolent third-strikers currently serving time in state
prisons could be eligible for resentencing, which could save taxpayers $150
million to $200 million a year.
Even if law enforcement leaders are willing to back the measure, the
proposal is likely to meet stiff resistance from powerful victims' rights
groups. Three-strikes author Mike Reynolds, whose 18-year-old daughter was
murdered in 1992 by a drug addict who had recently been released from prison
opposes any change. He said he wrote the law wholly intending for life
sentences to be handed to career criminals, even if their last conviction
was for a nonviolent felony such as drug possession.
"Once someone has been convicted of two serious or violent offences, I
suggest it's pretty clear what they are capable of," he said. "If this
passes, we are likely to see property crimes going up all over the state,
and in very short order."
Unlikely problems
Mike Romano, a Stanford University law professor, said statistics show that
people serving life sentences for a nonviolent, third strike offense are
much less likely to commit another violent crime than other felons. Four
percent qualify as high risk of committing a violent crime if released,
compared with 20 percent of the total prison population, according to state
assessments.
Five years ago, Romano founded the Three Strikes Project, in which law
students help to appeal cases of nonviolent offenders who have received a
third strike conviction. They have succeeded in reducing sentences for about
25 inmates, he said, and are representing the ballot measure's official
sponsor, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The state assessments show that "nonviolent third-strikers are the least
likely to re-offend of any group in prison," Romano said, in part because
older people are less likely to commit crimes. At the same time, he said,
they tend to be the most expensive to keep imprisoned because they are
getting older and their medical costs are skyrocketing.
Checks and balances
Romano stressed that the normal checks and balances of the criminal justice
system will remain in place if the law is passed.
Offenders "will have to go before a judge and show they are not a danger to
the community before their sentence can be reduced by one day," he said.
And if you do eliminate a life sentence, (taxpayers) get 30 years of cost
savings."
Those promoting the effort include wealthy former investment banker David
Mills, who has pledged to help bankroll it. The proposed initiative is
sitting at the attorney general's office, awaiting a title and summary
before backers can begin collecting signatures.
E-mail Marisa Lagos at mlagos@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Read more
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
America's Justice System Has Failed Us All
By Conrad Black for the Huffington Post
Read original page here
The unfairness, hypocrisy, and barbarism of the American criminal justice system is increasingly the subject of serious comment. Newt Gingrich is enjoying his brief sojourn as the non-Romney candidate of the Republicans, until the assassination squads in the New York Times and elsewhere give full play to his $1.6 million for history lessons to Fannie Mae, and his former love-ins with those great and reverend theologians Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and his peccadilloes while trying to impeach President Clinton for his peccadilloes. Although he has, as he put it when he resigned as speaker, "thrown too many interceptions," he has his moments.
One of them is his cogently expressed concern about the American justice system. He has remarked that the U.S. imprisons too many people, that sentences are too long, that there are often better ways to deal with felons than prison, and that many states are so strapped they can't afford the absurd $40,000 annual cost of housing a prisoner, and often do so in unsafe or otherwise unacceptable conditions.
Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, who seems to be almost the only remaining exemplar of the old legislative spirit of seeking to legislate where an area of public policy is in objective need of improvement, rather than just pandering to financial backers and rushing to the head of wherever the polls are, has proposed a commission to review the criminal justice system. There have been countless such commissions before; they never achieve anything, and everyone knows what the problems are. But Mr. Webb accurately summarizes some of the problem is America's incarceration of six to 12 times as many people per capita as other advanced, prosperous democracies (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom). Either, as he wrote in his essay, "Criminal Injustice," these other countries don't care about crime, which is nonsense (and they all have lower crime rates than the U.S.), or Americans are uniquely addicted to committing crimes, which is also nonsense, or the American system has broken down. Bingo.
The United States has five per cent of the world's population, 25 per cent of the world's incarcerated people, and 50 per cent of the world's lawyers (who account for nearly 10 per cent of the country's GDP, an onerous taxation of American society).
Almost everything about the American system is wrong. Grand juries are a rubber stamp for the prosecutors; assets are routinely frozen or seized in ex parte actions on the basis of false government affidavits, so targets don't have the resources to pay avaricious American counsel and are thrust into the hands of public defenders, who are usually just Judas goats for the prosecutors. The prosecutors poison the jury pool with a media lynching at the start; bail is often outrageously high, and prosecutions and ancillary proceedings from the SEC, IRS, etc., drag on for a whole decade, all contrary to the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments. The plea bargain system, for which prosecutors would be disbarred in most other serious countries, enables prosecutors to threaten everyone around the target with indictment if they don't miraculously recall, under careful government coaching, inculpatory evidence. Prosecutors win 95 per cent of their cases, 90 per cent of those without a trial, and people who exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to go to trial receive more than three times the sentence they receive if they cop a plea, as a penalty for exercising their rights.
Federal sentences are about twice as long as state ones, on average, for the same offence, and probably about a third of prisoners are in illegally crowded and inhumanely spartan or even unsanitary conditions.
Evidentiary and procedural rules are a stacked deck: the prosecutors speak last to the jury; most trial judges are ex-prosecutors who stitch up appeals in the courthouse lunch rooms; and the Supreme Court only takes 70 cases a year, is ostentatiously unconcerned with the facts and equity of cases, and only interprets and applies the law to ensure it is constitutional and uniform across the country. The sole defence the average American has against this evil, repulsive, and terroristic system is that America does not have the means or personnel to imprison more than one per cent of its adult population at any one time, though a stupefying 48 million Americans have a record.
The civil courts are the bread and butter of the vast medieval legal guild. Over 70 per cent of American cases would be inadmissible in Canada or Britain as frivolous or vexatious litigation, and the routine American practice of marketing contingent fees is just a tawdry racket.
Before I get to the main point of this recitation, disclosure, though it would be known to most readers: I was accused in 2005 of 17 counts of criminal corporate misconduct for which prosecutors in Chicago sought life imprisonment and fines and restitution totaling $140 million. Four counts were dropped; nine led to acquittals at trial, and the remaining four were unanimously vacated by the Supreme Court of the United States, as it rewrote the principal prosecuting statute. All were utterly spurious. But instead of overturning the last four counts and requiring prosecutors to retry if they wanted a conviction, the Supreme Court sent the vacated counts back to the appellate panel it had excoriated in its vacating opinion, to assess the gravity of the lower court's own errors. As was generally expected, including by me, the Circuit Court self-interestedly and unrigorously retrieved two of the counts, and the trial judge, who had initially sentenced me to 78 months in prison and fined me $6.225 million, after I had served 29 months and been out on bail (reduced from $38 million before and during trial to $2 million) for 14 months, has sent me back to prison, from which I write, for a victory lap of eight months, and reduced the financial penalty to $725,000.
In legal and equitable terms, it is an outrage, as no sane and fair-minded person, after the Swiss cheese we have made of the prosecution case, could imagine that I had committed any illegalities. I am philosophical about it all, including the destruction of the company my associates and I built, and the $2 billion of public shareholder value that the sponsors of the prosecution vaporized while enriching themselves with $300 million siphoned out of the company as they destroyed it. My fall, though terribly difficult in many ways, was interesting in the abstract, including my time in prison, a world I would not otherwise have seen, and where I have made many friends and have enjoyed teaching and tutoring secondary school graduation candidates, and have much expanded my writing career, as author and columnist. (I was fortunate to be sent to prisons with email access.) Though the authoritarian regime is often grating, I have had no disputes with the regime in either prison, and the trial judge graciously commended me on my conduct as a prisoner. She said I was a better person for having been in prison, and it is not for me to contradict her.
Most people whom my wife and I regarded as friends have proved to be so, and though there have been some disappointments, a few bitter disappointments, they have been largely compensated for by the very great number of strangers in all parts of the United States and Canada and other countries who have expressed their support. Given the correlation of forces between the USA and its Canadian Quislings, and me, I have done well enough to survive it, physically, morally, socially, and financially. I am a historian and a religious Roman Catholic and can deal with most people and events fairly equably. Only the physical separation from my magnificent wife has been completely intolerable.
All of the foregoing consists of previously published facts, (particularly in my recent book, A Matter of Principle), to which I wish to add a reflection on the role of the media in the corruption of American justice. The free press is almost as important a pillar of a free society as the justice system, and in the United States has failed almost as conspicuously.
It is enough for the media to be a pack of wolves when whistled up by the prosecutors. That is not tolerated in other mature countries but is routine here. The presumption of innocence, as with Leona Helmsley, Scooter Libby, Martha Stewart, Alfred Taubman and me, was as much ignored by the press as by the prosecutors (and we were all innocent). Nancy Grace and her ilk regularly demand the conviction of mere suspects.
I have successfully sued for libel, in Canada, people who have accused me of crimes grossly in excess of those of which I was falsely convicted. But even now, after the debunking of the whole spectacularly unsuccessful prosecution case, there are journalists who persist in pretending both that I am guilty as charged, and that they can so state with impunity.
The latest to blunder premeditatedly into this corrupt and common practice in my case is Duff McDonald, an unstylish hack who writes for Fortune and is as undiscriminating a lickspittle of the fashionable as he is a defamer of the transitorily improvident. He has the personality of a turbot, the literary flair of a sloth, and the professional ethics of a baboon. McDonald wrote on a Time Warner-CNN website that he had written a "vicious" piece about me some years ago in Vanity Fair, at the start of my legal travails. (Maureen Orth and Bryan Burrough have done better in the same magazine since, but they all illustrate the difficulty of trying to make a serious point in an unserious place.) McDonald described me recently as a "thief" and I am introducing him in Canada, (a New York Times and Sullivan-free zone), to the brave old world of the laws of defamation. Libel courts in places where the Internet circulates defamations seem to be the only way to detach much of the media from their instinct to be useful idiots for American prosecutors. A retraction is being negotiated, but I would be happy to welcome Duff McDonald to the bracing atmosphere of a Canadian court. Somebody should whack these freedom of expression mutants when they come snapping and stinging out of the undergrowth. It would be my pleasure, as well as a public service.
Read original page here
The unfairness, hypocrisy, and barbarism of the American criminal justice system is increasingly the subject of serious comment. Newt Gingrich is enjoying his brief sojourn as the non-Romney candidate of the Republicans, until the assassination squads in the New York Times and elsewhere give full play to his $1.6 million for history lessons to Fannie Mae, and his former love-ins with those great and reverend theologians Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and his peccadilloes while trying to impeach President Clinton for his peccadilloes. Although he has, as he put it when he resigned as speaker, "thrown too many interceptions," he has his moments.
One of them is his cogently expressed concern about the American justice system. He has remarked that the U.S. imprisons too many people, that sentences are too long, that there are often better ways to deal with felons than prison, and that many states are so strapped they can't afford the absurd $40,000 annual cost of housing a prisoner, and often do so in unsafe or otherwise unacceptable conditions.
Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, who seems to be almost the only remaining exemplar of the old legislative spirit of seeking to legislate where an area of public policy is in objective need of improvement, rather than just pandering to financial backers and rushing to the head of wherever the polls are, has proposed a commission to review the criminal justice system. There have been countless such commissions before; they never achieve anything, and everyone knows what the problems are. But Mr. Webb accurately summarizes some of the problem is America's incarceration of six to 12 times as many people per capita as other advanced, prosperous democracies (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom). Either, as he wrote in his essay, "Criminal Injustice," these other countries don't care about crime, which is nonsense (and they all have lower crime rates than the U.S.), or Americans are uniquely addicted to committing crimes, which is also nonsense, or the American system has broken down. Bingo.
The United States has five per cent of the world's population, 25 per cent of the world's incarcerated people, and 50 per cent of the world's lawyers (who account for nearly 10 per cent of the country's GDP, an onerous taxation of American society).
Almost everything about the American system is wrong. Grand juries are a rubber stamp for the prosecutors; assets are routinely frozen or seized in ex parte actions on the basis of false government affidavits, so targets don't have the resources to pay avaricious American counsel and are thrust into the hands of public defenders, who are usually just Judas goats for the prosecutors. The prosecutors poison the jury pool with a media lynching at the start; bail is often outrageously high, and prosecutions and ancillary proceedings from the SEC, IRS, etc., drag on for a whole decade, all contrary to the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments. The plea bargain system, for which prosecutors would be disbarred in most other serious countries, enables prosecutors to threaten everyone around the target with indictment if they don't miraculously recall, under careful government coaching, inculpatory evidence. Prosecutors win 95 per cent of their cases, 90 per cent of those without a trial, and people who exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to go to trial receive more than three times the sentence they receive if they cop a plea, as a penalty for exercising their rights.
Federal sentences are about twice as long as state ones, on average, for the same offence, and probably about a third of prisoners are in illegally crowded and inhumanely spartan or even unsanitary conditions.
Evidentiary and procedural rules are a stacked deck: the prosecutors speak last to the jury; most trial judges are ex-prosecutors who stitch up appeals in the courthouse lunch rooms; and the Supreme Court only takes 70 cases a year, is ostentatiously unconcerned with the facts and equity of cases, and only interprets and applies the law to ensure it is constitutional and uniform across the country. The sole defence the average American has against this evil, repulsive, and terroristic system is that America does not have the means or personnel to imprison more than one per cent of its adult population at any one time, though a stupefying 48 million Americans have a record.
The civil courts are the bread and butter of the vast medieval legal guild. Over 70 per cent of American cases would be inadmissible in Canada or Britain as frivolous or vexatious litigation, and the routine American practice of marketing contingent fees is just a tawdry racket.
Before I get to the main point of this recitation, disclosure, though it would be known to most readers: I was accused in 2005 of 17 counts of criminal corporate misconduct for which prosecutors in Chicago sought life imprisonment and fines and restitution totaling $140 million. Four counts were dropped; nine led to acquittals at trial, and the remaining four were unanimously vacated by the Supreme Court of the United States, as it rewrote the principal prosecuting statute. All were utterly spurious. But instead of overturning the last four counts and requiring prosecutors to retry if they wanted a conviction, the Supreme Court sent the vacated counts back to the appellate panel it had excoriated in its vacating opinion, to assess the gravity of the lower court's own errors. As was generally expected, including by me, the Circuit Court self-interestedly and unrigorously retrieved two of the counts, and the trial judge, who had initially sentenced me to 78 months in prison and fined me $6.225 million, after I had served 29 months and been out on bail (reduced from $38 million before and during trial to $2 million) for 14 months, has sent me back to prison, from which I write, for a victory lap of eight months, and reduced the financial penalty to $725,000.
In legal and equitable terms, it is an outrage, as no sane and fair-minded person, after the Swiss cheese we have made of the prosecution case, could imagine that I had committed any illegalities. I am philosophical about it all, including the destruction of the company my associates and I built, and the $2 billion of public shareholder value that the sponsors of the prosecution vaporized while enriching themselves with $300 million siphoned out of the company as they destroyed it. My fall, though terribly difficult in many ways, was interesting in the abstract, including my time in prison, a world I would not otherwise have seen, and where I have made many friends and have enjoyed teaching and tutoring secondary school graduation candidates, and have much expanded my writing career, as author and columnist. (I was fortunate to be sent to prisons with email access.) Though the authoritarian regime is often grating, I have had no disputes with the regime in either prison, and the trial judge graciously commended me on my conduct as a prisoner. She said I was a better person for having been in prison, and it is not for me to contradict her.
Most people whom my wife and I regarded as friends have proved to be so, and though there have been some disappointments, a few bitter disappointments, they have been largely compensated for by the very great number of strangers in all parts of the United States and Canada and other countries who have expressed their support. Given the correlation of forces between the USA and its Canadian Quislings, and me, I have done well enough to survive it, physically, morally, socially, and financially. I am a historian and a religious Roman Catholic and can deal with most people and events fairly equably. Only the physical separation from my magnificent wife has been completely intolerable.
All of the foregoing consists of previously published facts, (particularly in my recent book, A Matter of Principle), to which I wish to add a reflection on the role of the media in the corruption of American justice. The free press is almost as important a pillar of a free society as the justice system, and in the United States has failed almost as conspicuously.
It is enough for the media to be a pack of wolves when whistled up by the prosecutors. That is not tolerated in other mature countries but is routine here. The presumption of innocence, as with Leona Helmsley, Scooter Libby, Martha Stewart, Alfred Taubman and me, was as much ignored by the press as by the prosecutors (and we were all innocent). Nancy Grace and her ilk regularly demand the conviction of mere suspects.
I have successfully sued for libel, in Canada, people who have accused me of crimes grossly in excess of those of which I was falsely convicted. But even now, after the debunking of the whole spectacularly unsuccessful prosecution case, there are journalists who persist in pretending both that I am guilty as charged, and that they can so state with impunity.
The latest to blunder premeditatedly into this corrupt and common practice in my case is Duff McDonald, an unstylish hack who writes for Fortune and is as undiscriminating a lickspittle of the fashionable as he is a defamer of the transitorily improvident. He has the personality of a turbot, the literary flair of a sloth, and the professional ethics of a baboon. McDonald wrote on a Time Warner-CNN website that he had written a "vicious" piece about me some years ago in Vanity Fair, at the start of my legal travails. (Maureen Orth and Bryan Burrough have done better in the same magazine since, but they all illustrate the difficulty of trying to make a serious point in an unserious place.) McDonald described me recently as a "thief" and I am introducing him in Canada, (a New York Times and Sullivan-free zone), to the brave old world of the laws of defamation. Libel courts in places where the Internet circulates defamations seem to be the only way to detach much of the media from their instinct to be useful idiots for American prosecutors. A retraction is being negotiated, but I would be happy to welcome Duff McDonald to the bracing atmosphere of a Canadian court. Somebody should whack these freedom of expression mutants when they come snapping and stinging out of the undergrowth. It would be my pleasure, as well as a public service.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Opinion: Is realignment an opportunity? If so, let’s not waste it on building costly jail beds.
By Emily Harris | 11/23/11 12:00 AM PST
November 17th's "California's Prison System - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” conference, organized by Capitol Weekly and the University of California, brought together experts, advocates, and law enforcement and highlighted the devastating impacts of the expansion of California's prison system and consequent shift in state spending on education and social services. Conversations at the conference brought into sharper focus why California can't risk falling into the familiar pattern of failed corrections policies as it realigns public safety.
It has been seven months since the Supreme Court ordered California to drastically reduce the state's prison population. Beginning Oct. 1, responsibility for low-level prisoners was transferred from state prisons to counties. While politicians and pundits called the move unprecedented, many counties drafted ill-conceived plans that simply shift overcrowding from the state level prisons to already crowded county jails.
Only a few counties such as Glenn, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, have decided not to expand their jails. They have opted instead to use alternatives to incarceration like drug treatment, housing and restorative justice programs, with strong reentry services for those exiting county facilities. These counties are taking measures to reduce California's unprecedented 70 percent recidivism rate head on, and push for solutions that support communities and reduce the state’s addiction to imprisonment.
On the other end of the spectrum, 34 of California's 58 counties have indicated plans for expensive jail expansions to date, while leaving programs and services as an "unaffordable" afterthought. It is no wonder that these counties have higher imprisonment rates, and it appears they will continue to.
In 2007, the California Legislature passed AB 900, providing $7.7 billion in lease revenue bonds to build 53,000 more prison and jail cells, which will cost taxpayers billions per year to operate. AB 900 was amended earlier this year after the realignment bill passed, making it easier for counties to access this construction money, which almost all of the 34 counties are vying for. If realignment was sold to us as an opportunity for counties to do things better and an opportunity to save California money, then why is the only money being made available to counties tied to building more cages? Where are the state funds and policy incentives for counties to reduce the number of people cycling through the system?
Following 30 years of failed state corrections policy and out-of-control corrections spending is a risk our communities cannot afford to take. We need the Legislature and county elected officials to join Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) in calling for a statewide moratorium on prison and jail construction. This would rapidly incentivize common sense parole and sentencing reforms and meaningful alternatives to imprisonment. If realignment is to be successful, it must move away from financially and socially disastrous expansion plans and invest in supporting people returning to our counties. Otherwise, future cuts to education and human services are inevitable.
Just last week, California's Legislative Analyst Office released grim news about the state's financial health. The nonpartisan office projects a $13 billion deficit for 2012, and $3.7 billion revenue shortfall that could trigger at least $2 billion in service and program cuts. Hit hardest will be education from kindergartens to colleges, as well as in-home support, library, childcare and Medi-Cal services. The dire forecast also predicts a continued drop in wages and an unemployment rate of over 10 percent.
The LAO report guarantees that "tier 1” trigger cuts of $608 million will be enacted as early as January, just weeks after 25 counties were invited to apply for over $603 million in AB 900 Phase 2 funding to build more jail cells. Haven’t we Californians had enough of cutting funds for education and health care to pay for more prison and jail cells?
The LAO notes that next year’s planned prison expansion will add $800 million per year to CDCR's operating costs. In fact, they recommend that "given the likely magnitude of these eventual costs, as well as the significant reduction in the state's inmate population resulting from the federal court ruling to reduce prison overcrowding, the Legislature may want to hold off from moving forward with some of the projects authorized under AB 900." Let's turn “some” to “all.”
November 17th's "California's Prison System - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” conference, organized by Capitol Weekly and the University of California, brought together experts, advocates, and law enforcement and highlighted the devastating impacts of the expansion of California's prison system and consequent shift in state spending on education and social services. Conversations at the conference brought into sharper focus why California can't risk falling into the familiar pattern of failed corrections policies as it realigns public safety.
It has been seven months since the Supreme Court ordered California to drastically reduce the state's prison population. Beginning Oct. 1, responsibility for low-level prisoners was transferred from state prisons to counties. While politicians and pundits called the move unprecedented, many counties drafted ill-conceived plans that simply shift overcrowding from the state level prisons to already crowded county jails.
Only a few counties such as Glenn, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, have decided not to expand their jails. They have opted instead to use alternatives to incarceration like drug treatment, housing and restorative justice programs, with strong reentry services for those exiting county facilities. These counties are taking measures to reduce California's unprecedented 70 percent recidivism rate head on, and push for solutions that support communities and reduce the state’s addiction to imprisonment.
On the other end of the spectrum, 34 of California's 58 counties have indicated plans for expensive jail expansions to date, while leaving programs and services as an "unaffordable" afterthought. It is no wonder that these counties have higher imprisonment rates, and it appears they will continue to.
In 2007, the California Legislature passed AB 900, providing $7.7 billion in lease revenue bonds to build 53,000 more prison and jail cells, which will cost taxpayers billions per year to operate. AB 900 was amended earlier this year after the realignment bill passed, making it easier for counties to access this construction money, which almost all of the 34 counties are vying for. If realignment was sold to us as an opportunity for counties to do things better and an opportunity to save California money, then why is the only money being made available to counties tied to building more cages? Where are the state funds and policy incentives for counties to reduce the number of people cycling through the system?
Following 30 years of failed state corrections policy and out-of-control corrections spending is a risk our communities cannot afford to take. We need the Legislature and county elected officials to join Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) in calling for a statewide moratorium on prison and jail construction. This would rapidly incentivize common sense parole and sentencing reforms and meaningful alternatives to imprisonment. If realignment is to be successful, it must move away from financially and socially disastrous expansion plans and invest in supporting people returning to our counties. Otherwise, future cuts to education and human services are inevitable.
Just last week, California's Legislative Analyst Office released grim news about the state's financial health. The nonpartisan office projects a $13 billion deficit for 2012, and $3.7 billion revenue shortfall that could trigger at least $2 billion in service and program cuts. Hit hardest will be education from kindergartens to colleges, as well as in-home support, library, childcare and Medi-Cal services. The dire forecast also predicts a continued drop in wages and an unemployment rate of over 10 percent.
The LAO report guarantees that "tier 1” trigger cuts of $608 million will be enacted as early as January, just weeks after 25 counties were invited to apply for over $603 million in AB 900 Phase 2 funding to build more jail cells. Haven’t we Californians had enough of cutting funds for education and health care to pay for more prison and jail cells?
The LAO notes that next year’s planned prison expansion will add $800 million per year to CDCR's operating costs. In fact, they recommend that "given the likely magnitude of these eventual costs, as well as the significant reduction in the state's inmate population resulting from the federal court ruling to reduce prison overcrowding, the Legislature may want to hold off from moving forward with some of the projects authorized under AB 900." Let's turn “some” to “all.”
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
A Country of Inmates
NY TIMES
By ALBERT R. HUNT | BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: November 20, 2011
The United States has 2.3 million people behind bars, almost one in every 100 Americans. The U.S. prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years, and one in nine black children has a parent in jail.
Proportionally, the United States has four times as many prisoners as Israel, six times as many as Canada or China, eight times as many as Germany and 13 times as many as Japan.
With just a little more than 4 percent of the world’s population, the United States accounts for a quarter of the planet’s prisoners and has more inmates than the leading 35 European countries combined. Almost all the other nations with high per capita prison rates are in the developing world.
There’s also a national election in the United States soon. This issue isn’t on the agenda. It’s almost never come up with Republican presidential candidates; one of the few exceptions was at a debate in September when the audience cheered the notion of executions in Texas.
Barack Obama, the first black president, rarely mentions this question or how it disproportionately affects minorities. More than 60 percent of the United States’ prisoners are black or Hispanic, though these groups comprise less than 30 percent of the population.
“We’ve had a race to incarcerate that has been driven by politics, racially coded, get-tough appeals,” said Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State University who wrote “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
The escalating cost of the criminal-justice system is an important factor in the fiscal challenges around the United States. Nowhere is that more evident than in California, which is struggling to obey a court order requiring it to reduce its overcrowded prisons by 40,000 inmates.
Today, there are 140,000 convicts in California’s state prisons, who cost about $50,000 each per year. The state pays more on prisons than it does on higher education.
Yet the prisons are so crowded — as many as 54 inmates have to share one toilet — that Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted in the death of the pop star Michael Jackson, may be able to avoid most prison time.
California isn’t unique. In Raleigh County, West Virginia, the county commission has worried that the cost of housing inmates at its Southern Regional Jail may imperil basic services, including education. That problem is exacerbated as the state keeps more prisoners longer at such regional facilities to alleviate its overcrowding problems.
The prison explosion hasn’t been driven by an increase in crime. In fact, the crime rate, notably for violent offenses, is dropping across the United States, a phenomenon that began about 20 years ago.
The latest F.B.I. figures show that murder, rape and robberies have fallen to an almost half-century low; to be sure, they remain higher than in other major industrialized countries.
There are many theories for this decline. The most accepted is that community police work in major metropolitan areas has improved markedly, focusing on potential high-crime areas. There are countless other hypotheses, even ranging to controversial claims that more accessible abortion has reduced a number of unwanted children who were more likely to have committed crimes.
However, one other likely explanation is that more than a few would-be criminals are locked up. Scholars like James Q. Wilson have noted that the longer prison terms that are being handed down may matter more than the conviction rates.
This comes at a clear cost. For those who do ultimately get out, being an ex-con means about a 40 percent decrease in annual earnings.
Moreover, research suggests that children from homes where a father is in jail do considerably less well in life and are more prone to becoming criminals themselves.
“People ask why so many black kids are growing up without fathers,” said Ms. Alexander. “A big part of the answer is mass incarceration.”
It seems clear that the U.S. penal system discriminates against minorities. Some of this is socioeconomic, as poorer people, disproportionately blacks and Hispanics, may commit more crimes.
Much of the inmate explosion and racial disparities, however, grow out of the way the United States treats illegal drugs. It began several decades ago with harsher penalties for crimes involving crack cocaine, which was more widely used by blacks, than powder cocaine, which was more likely to involve whites. A larger issue is how the U.S. criminal justice system differentiates in its treatment of drug sellers — who get the book thrown at them — versus drug users, who, at most, get a slap on the wrist.
A hypothetical example: A black kid is arrested for selling cocaine to the members of a fraternity at an elite university. The seller gets sent away for 25 years. The fraternity is put on probation for a semester by the university and nothing else.
In all likelihood, the convicted seller is quickly replaced, and few of the fraternity kids change their drug-use habits. The lesson: neither the supply nor the demand has changed, and the prison population grows.
Given their budgetary difficulties, about half the states are actually reducing their prison populations. Smart selective policies are cost-effective. Many criminologists and sociologists say the proclivity to commit crimes diminishes with age; the recidivism rate for convicts over 30 is relatively low, and most every analysis suggests that parole and probation are far less expensive for taxpayers than incarceration.
Nevertheless, the politics of the crime issue cuts against any rational approach. Even if recidivism rates are low, it’s the failures that attract attention. In 1988, the Democratic presidential nominee, Michael S. Dukakis, was savaged when it was revealed that one convict, Willie Horton, who was furloughed on his watch as governor of Massachusetts committed a rape while at large. Four years ago, the former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, a Republican, was hurt in his bid for his party’s nomination by reports of crimes committed by felons who were paroled during his time in office.
“One case where a parolee does something very wrong is sensationalized,” Ms. Alexander said, “and many, many others are kept behind bars for a long time.”
By ALBERT R. HUNT | BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: November 20, 2011
The United States has 2.3 million people behind bars, almost one in every 100 Americans. The U.S. prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years, and one in nine black children has a parent in jail.
Proportionally, the United States has four times as many prisoners as Israel, six times as many as Canada or China, eight times as many as Germany and 13 times as many as Japan.
With just a little more than 4 percent of the world’s population, the United States accounts for a quarter of the planet’s prisoners and has more inmates than the leading 35 European countries combined. Almost all the other nations with high per capita prison rates are in the developing world.
There’s also a national election in the United States soon. This issue isn’t on the agenda. It’s almost never come up with Republican presidential candidates; one of the few exceptions was at a debate in September when the audience cheered the notion of executions in Texas.
Barack Obama, the first black president, rarely mentions this question or how it disproportionately affects minorities. More than 60 percent of the United States’ prisoners are black or Hispanic, though these groups comprise less than 30 percent of the population.
“We’ve had a race to incarcerate that has been driven by politics, racially coded, get-tough appeals,” said Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State University who wrote “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
The escalating cost of the criminal-justice system is an important factor in the fiscal challenges around the United States. Nowhere is that more evident than in California, which is struggling to obey a court order requiring it to reduce its overcrowded prisons by 40,000 inmates.
Today, there are 140,000 convicts in California’s state prisons, who cost about $50,000 each per year. The state pays more on prisons than it does on higher education.
Yet the prisons are so crowded — as many as 54 inmates have to share one toilet — that Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted in the death of the pop star Michael Jackson, may be able to avoid most prison time.
California isn’t unique. In Raleigh County, West Virginia, the county commission has worried that the cost of housing inmates at its Southern Regional Jail may imperil basic services, including education. That problem is exacerbated as the state keeps more prisoners longer at such regional facilities to alleviate its overcrowding problems.
The prison explosion hasn’t been driven by an increase in crime. In fact, the crime rate, notably for violent offenses, is dropping across the United States, a phenomenon that began about 20 years ago.
The latest F.B.I. figures show that murder, rape and robberies have fallen to an almost half-century low; to be sure, they remain higher than in other major industrialized countries.
There are many theories for this decline. The most accepted is that community police work in major metropolitan areas has improved markedly, focusing on potential high-crime areas. There are countless other hypotheses, even ranging to controversial claims that more accessible abortion has reduced a number of unwanted children who were more likely to have committed crimes.
However, one other likely explanation is that more than a few would-be criminals are locked up. Scholars like James Q. Wilson have noted that the longer prison terms that are being handed down may matter more than the conviction rates.
This comes at a clear cost. For those who do ultimately get out, being an ex-con means about a 40 percent decrease in annual earnings.
Moreover, research suggests that children from homes where a father is in jail do considerably less well in life and are more prone to becoming criminals themselves.
“People ask why so many black kids are growing up without fathers,” said Ms. Alexander. “A big part of the answer is mass incarceration.”
It seems clear that the U.S. penal system discriminates against minorities. Some of this is socioeconomic, as poorer people, disproportionately blacks and Hispanics, may commit more crimes.
Much of the inmate explosion and racial disparities, however, grow out of the way the United States treats illegal drugs. It began several decades ago with harsher penalties for crimes involving crack cocaine, which was more widely used by blacks, than powder cocaine, which was more likely to involve whites. A larger issue is how the U.S. criminal justice system differentiates in its treatment of drug sellers — who get the book thrown at them — versus drug users, who, at most, get a slap on the wrist.
A hypothetical example: A black kid is arrested for selling cocaine to the members of a fraternity at an elite university. The seller gets sent away for 25 years. The fraternity is put on probation for a semester by the university and nothing else.
In all likelihood, the convicted seller is quickly replaced, and few of the fraternity kids change their drug-use habits. The lesson: neither the supply nor the demand has changed, and the prison population grows.
Given their budgetary difficulties, about half the states are actually reducing their prison populations. Smart selective policies are cost-effective. Many criminologists and sociologists say the proclivity to commit crimes diminishes with age; the recidivism rate for convicts over 30 is relatively low, and most every analysis suggests that parole and probation are far less expensive for taxpayers than incarceration.
Nevertheless, the politics of the crime issue cuts against any rational approach. Even if recidivism rates are low, it’s the failures that attract attention. In 1988, the Democratic presidential nominee, Michael S. Dukakis, was savaged when it was revealed that one convict, Willie Horton, who was furloughed on his watch as governor of Massachusetts committed a rape while at large. Four years ago, the former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, a Republican, was hurt in his bid for his party’s nomination by reports of crimes committed by felons who were paroled during his time in office.
“One case where a parolee does something very wrong is sensationalized,” Ms. Alexander said, “and many, many others are kept behind bars for a long time.”
Thursday, November 17, 2011
California finance director says mid-year budget cuts likely
Gov. Jerry Brown's finance director said Wednesday that some mid-year cuts are "likely," increasing the possibility the state will slash education and social services in the coming months.
Finance Director Ana Matosantos issued her statement just as nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor presented his report projecting that California will fall $3.7 billion short in revenues this fiscal year.
Under the June budget deal, the state must impose "trigger" cuts to a variety of education and social services programs if it falls more than $1 billion shy in revenues. To determine the state's revenue picture, Matosantos will use either her own department's forecast or the analyst's, whichever is rosier.
"The LAO report acknowledges the tough work that has been done to cut the state's deficit in half, but that there is more tough work ahead," Matosantos said in a statement. "The budget the Governor signed recognized that economic uncertainty could force the trigger cuts to take effect. Some level of trigger cuts will likely occur, but the exact amount will be known in December."
Matosantos will release her department's forecast by December 15, but her statement today serves as an early acknowledgment that the state is heading toward mid-year cuts. Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said Wednesday that it remains possible that Finance could project as much as $2 billion more or less in revenues than he did.
At his press conference Wednesday, Taylor seemed to discourage lawmakers from taking action to avoid trigger cuts in light of a nearly $13 billion hole staring at them in 2012-13.
Find out more about California Partnership Here
Learn About the Three Strikes Reform Act for 2012 on Sat at 1:00 pm
Tune into Think Outside the Cage at 1:00 PM Saturday, November 19th at 1:00
PM (on 90.7 KPFK fm in Los Angeles, 98.7 in Santa Barbara, 93.7 in San Diego
and 99.5 in Ridgecrest/China Lake, or listen live at www.kpfk.org) for a
discussion of the Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012 which in all probability
will be on the November 2012 ballot. This is the first serious effort to
reform the law since 2004.
PM (on 90.7 KPFK fm in Los Angeles, 98.7 in Santa Barbara, 93.7 in San Diego
and 99.5 in Ridgecrest/China Lake, or listen live at www.kpfk.org) for a
discussion of the Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012 which in all probability
will be on the November 2012 ballot. This is the first serious effort to
reform the law since 2004.
Annette Summers, Northern California FACTS Director will begin with an
explanation of the Act and Sue Reams, FACTS leader since 1997 and mother of
a Striker, will speak about what FACTS is doing and what YOU can do to
insure a victory in 2012!! Then it will be your turn. We invite serious
callers to join in the conversation, ask questions and share with FACTS'
members Sue and Annette what you can/will do.
explanation of the Act and Sue Reams, FACTS leader since 1997 and mother of
a Striker, will speak about what FACTS is doing and what YOU can do to
insure a victory in 2012!! Then it will be your turn. We invite serious
callers to join in the conversation, ask questions and share with FACTS'
members Sue and Annette what you can/will do.
Many of us see this as a first step in the effort to curtail this truly
barbaric law.
barbaric law.
The program begins at 1:00 PM and the number to call to get on the show is
818.985.5735.
818.985.5735.
Find out more about FACTS by visiting www.facts1.net
California jails receiving more state prisoners than expected
Full Story Here
The number of state prisoners arriving in county jails under California's controversial prison diversion program is significantly higher than officials had estimated, adding new pressure on sheriff's departments to figure out what to do with thousands of extra inmates.
Prisoners convicted of some nonviolent crimes began serving their time in county jails last month as California complied with a U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring the state to lower its prison population by 30,000.
But the number of state prisoners being transferred has been much higher than officials had predicted, prompting counties to speed up efforts to reopen shuttered jail wings and find other arrangements for some inmates.
Los Angeles County was projected to add about 600 state prisoners by now but has booked more than 900. The tally in Orange County is running more than double what the state had estimated.
Based on the state's initial projections, Orange County officials believed their jail system would reach capacity sometime in 2013, giving them time to find more jail beds. But if the trend continues, the county could reach capacity by May, said Assistant Sheriff Mike James.
In Kern County, the jail system got so full last week that the Sheriff's Department freed 50 parole violators — including thieves — because they had no jail beds for them.
"Instead of 120 inmates, we got 150 inmates extra in October. That adds up over 12 months," said Corrections Chief Kevin Zimmermann of the Kern County Sheriff's Department.
County jails are receiving extra state funding to help house the prisoners, but there are doubts about whether the money will be enough to avoid releasing some inmates. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said he is considering a plan to release some inmates who are awaiting trial and outfit them with electronic monitors that chronicle their movements.
Other counties are also considering major expansions of house-arrest programs, as well as channeling some nonviolent inmates into mental health and substance abuse programs.
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department has the funding to open only an additional 1,800 beds, but the county is expected to receive 8,000 state prisoners in the next year, according to an internal report by the district attorney's office. That report also said the jails could reach capacity in December. Sheriff's officials said that it's unclear when the jails will be full but that it could occur in 2012.
Some counties, such as Los Angeles, are under court order preventing jail overcrowding. So officials said it's almost a foregone conclusion that some inmates will be released to make way for the state prisoners.
Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said none of the alternatives are ideal. For example, she said, she's not sure how many inmates can be trusted to serve time wearing GPS-monitored bracelets.
"The question is how many can be put out safely on electronic monitoring? We are not going to have enough money to put everyone in jail. Jail is the most costly alternative," Hutchens said. "In California, the public wants criminals to do their full time, but no one wants to build more county jails and prisons. So something has to give."
State corrections officials said they hadn't expected the plan known as realignment to be a smooth transition because it is such an unprecedented shift. They acknowledged that their estimates have been off but believe the surge will be short-lived.
"We do expect that the overall jail admissions will level out," said Dana Toyama, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She added that some estimates have turned out to be correct, including the number of prisoners sent to San Francisco.
State officials and some sheriffs believe the higher-than-projected number of state prisoners being sent to jails has occurred in part because defense attorneys waited until realignment took effect to settle their clients' cases. By doing that, the attorneys were assured that their clients would receive jail time instead of prison time.
"We believe it has occurred because of publicity the realignment received. Defense attorneys delayed a lot of adjudications until after Oct. 1," when the law took effect, said Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin, president of the California State Sheriffs' Assn. "Those persons who pleaded guilty ended up in the local facilities when under the old course of events they would have gone to prison."
Many county officials say it's just a matter time before some inmates have to be released.
Riverside County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jerry Gutierrez said his jail is now at 93% capacity and will be full by January. In San Bernardino County, officials are planning to significantly expands their work-release and electronic monitoring programs, certain that the influx of state prisoners will force some releases.
"We just started the biggest system change in the history of California justice," said Nick Warner, legislative director for the State Sheriffs' Assn. "Anyone who predicts with certainty failure or success is premature in that judgment."
The number of state prisoners arriving in county jails under California's controversial prison diversion program is significantly higher than officials had estimated, adding new pressure on sheriff's departments to figure out what to do with thousands of extra inmates.
Prisoners convicted of some nonviolent crimes began serving their time in county jails last month as California complied with a U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring the state to lower its prison population by 30,000.
But the number of state prisoners being transferred has been much higher than officials had predicted, prompting counties to speed up efforts to reopen shuttered jail wings and find other arrangements for some inmates.
Los Angeles County was projected to add about 600 state prisoners by now but has booked more than 900. The tally in Orange County is running more than double what the state had estimated.
Based on the state's initial projections, Orange County officials believed their jail system would reach capacity sometime in 2013, giving them time to find more jail beds. But if the trend continues, the county could reach capacity by May, said Assistant Sheriff Mike James.
In Kern County, the jail system got so full last week that the Sheriff's Department freed 50 parole violators — including thieves — because they had no jail beds for them.
"Instead of 120 inmates, we got 150 inmates extra in October. That adds up over 12 months," said Corrections Chief Kevin Zimmermann of the Kern County Sheriff's Department.
County jails are receiving extra state funding to help house the prisoners, but there are doubts about whether the money will be enough to avoid releasing some inmates. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said he is considering a plan to release some inmates who are awaiting trial and outfit them with electronic monitors that chronicle their movements.
Other counties are also considering major expansions of house-arrest programs, as well as channeling some nonviolent inmates into mental health and substance abuse programs.
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department has the funding to open only an additional 1,800 beds, but the county is expected to receive 8,000 state prisoners in the next year, according to an internal report by the district attorney's office. That report also said the jails could reach capacity in December. Sheriff's officials said that it's unclear when the jails will be full but that it could occur in 2012.
Some counties, such as Los Angeles, are under court order preventing jail overcrowding. So officials said it's almost a foregone conclusion that some inmates will be released to make way for the state prisoners.
Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said none of the alternatives are ideal. For example, she said, she's not sure how many inmates can be trusted to serve time wearing GPS-monitored bracelets.
"The question is how many can be put out safely on electronic monitoring? We are not going to have enough money to put everyone in jail. Jail is the most costly alternative," Hutchens said. "In California, the public wants criminals to do their full time, but no one wants to build more county jails and prisons. So something has to give."
State corrections officials said they hadn't expected the plan known as realignment to be a smooth transition because it is such an unprecedented shift. They acknowledged that their estimates have been off but believe the surge will be short-lived.
"We do expect that the overall jail admissions will level out," said Dana Toyama, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She added that some estimates have turned out to be correct, including the number of prisoners sent to San Francisco.
State officials and some sheriffs believe the higher-than-projected number of state prisoners being sent to jails has occurred in part because defense attorneys waited until realignment took effect to settle their clients' cases. By doing that, the attorneys were assured that their clients would receive jail time instead of prison time.
"We believe it has occurred because of publicity the realignment received. Defense attorneys delayed a lot of adjudications until after Oct. 1," when the law took effect, said Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin, president of the California State Sheriffs' Assn. "Those persons who pleaded guilty ended up in the local facilities when under the old course of events they would have gone to prison."
Many county officials say it's just a matter time before some inmates have to be released.
Riverside County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jerry Gutierrez said his jail is now at 93% capacity and will be full by January. In San Bernardino County, officials are planning to significantly expands their work-release and electronic monitoring programs, certain that the influx of state prisoners will force some releases.
"We just started the biggest system change in the history of California justice," said Nick Warner, legislative director for the State Sheriffs' Assn. "Anyone who predicts with certainty failure or success is premature in that judgment."
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