The Case for Prison Reform

Many people in California voted in 2008 for Proposition 2, which requires the state’s farmers to provide chickens and some other critters with enough room to extend their wings, lie down and turn around.


My youngest daughter, a grand-champion chicken “showman” at county fairs, explained why: “Who can bear the thought of Henrietta spending her life in a tiny cage?” Despite its many flaws, it passed overwhelmingly. “I can’t bear the thought of it,” certainly isn’t the best standard to apply to politics, but there’s no doubt such sentiment can — and sometimes should — spur people to action.

California’s massive prison system spends nearly $50,000 a year to house each inmate. Californians are accustomed to outrageous displays of fiscal profligacy and they manage to grin and bear it. What’s really unbearable is the human tragedy unfolding at out-of-sight, out-of-mind places such as Pelican Bay and Corcoran state prisons.

The latest news is a hunger strike. It started with about 30,000 prisoners across the state who, earlier this month, refused food to protest what they say are inhumane conditions. The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation pegged the dwindling number of hunger-strikers at 986 as of Tuesday, but the peaceful protest continues. It’s not hard to understand why when one looks at the conditions prisoners endure.

Most of the strikers live in Security Housing Units (SHUs) — 7½-by-12-foot windowless concrete cells, where they are stripped of most human contact, handed their food through a portal, and left with little to do for more than 22 hours a day. They get short periods to exercise in a small caged area.

Most people understand the need for solitary confinement for misbehaving prisoners in these tough prison situations. Someone who, say, assaults a guard in prison will have a hearing and can be sentenced to a SHU for specific time period. Otherwise, how does one punish prisoners who are already in prison?

But the vast majority of the hunger-striking prisoners are there for indeterminate sentences — not as the result of a disciplinary action, but because prison authorities say that they have gang affiliations. Mainly, prison authorities keep the prisoners there until they are “debriefed,” i.e., turn in other prisoners as fellow gang-bangers. Few inmates are likely to do so given the severe consequences in the prison yard, so they languish in these cells for years. The ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties believes prison authorities may rely on these cells because of so much overcrowding throughout the prisons.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, more than 500 prisoners at Pelican Bay have been in such cells for more than a decade, and 78 for more than two decades. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, told me that “indefinite days of solitary confinement are cruel and unusual punishment.” It’s hard not to agree, even though these prisoners are unsympathetic characters.

It’s not just left-leaning activists and academics who are complaining. Former Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Orange County is now vice president of the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin. The group sponsors the “Right on Crime” project, which promotes prison- and sentencing-reform to conservatives.

Long periods of solitary confinement not only cause deep psychological problems, but increase the recidivism rate, he told me. In California, inmates in SHUs won’t renounce their gangs because their lives will be in peril when they are returned to the main areas, he added, but Texas officials are less apt to use solitary confinement and simply move these members who renounce their gangs to separate parts of the prison where they are protected from retaliation.

Texas has the reputation of being the “tougher on crime” state, yet it’s more willing to consider humanitarian reform — perhaps because officials there are more willing to take on the unions and bureaucrats who run the prison system.

California prison spokesman Jeffrey Callison reminded me that a new state pilot project is reducing the numbers of inmates in isolated housing and giving them more due-process rights before landing there.

But that doesn’t change the unbearable reality that California voters seem more concerned about the conditions faced by chickens than by their fellow human beings.

via Reason.com

Waterless Fracking Moves Into The Market, With Its Own Set Of Safety Issues

In this July 27, 2011 file photo, the sun shines over a Range Resources well site in Washington, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)

As debate rages on over the health impacts associated with petroleum companies’ practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the industry is coming up with a new but equally controversial technique to get at oil and natural gas deposits thousands of feet below the surface of the earth.

Californians are bracing for a new form of fracking that uses pressurized gas to break up formations where oil is hidden instead of the usual combination of water, silica sand and chemicals.

It’s called dry-fracking, and it’s expected to make its way to California communities soon if the oil industry has its way.

California is home to the Monterey shale, a geologic formation that stretches from northern California to the Los Angeles area. According to the U.S. Energy Department, the formation holds 15 billion barrels of untapped oil, accounting for more than is held in North Dakota’s Bakken oil region.

While the oil industry has long eyed the formation as a source of big bucks, it has been met with opposition from the agricultural community, vineyard owners included, as each fracking well uses roughly 4 million gallons of water.

This new form of dry-fracking takes that argument off the table, but it also brings along a new set of concerns for those working to maintain the land of the Monterey shale region.

“(What) really scares me, first of all about the safety during production because somebody could light a cigarette and there you go, the whole town blows up,” Patricia Lerman, of the local advocacy group Aromas Cares For Our Environment, told Central Coast News, a Fox affiliate station.

That’s not the only argument against dry-fracking. The Center for Biological Diversity, based in San Francisco, has also come out swinging against the emergence of the technique, claiming it’s too early to know what the impacts could be if used in California.

Dry-fracking is already being practiced by at least two Texas-based companies, according to Central Coast News.

Gasfrac Energy Services Inc., a company based in Calgary, Alberta, has an office in Houston and touts the new form of fracking as one the company operates in a safe and reliable manner. According to the company’s website, Gasfrac patented its own waterless “Liquid Petroleum Gas” gel, which it claims “yields higher reservoir production while eliminating concerns over water use in fracturing.”

“While GASFRAC’s process inherently has different risks from conventional fracture stimulation — our strong safety focus means we’ve improved upon, and even advanced, certain safety features and protocols, allowing for increased safety in oilfield operations,” Gasfrac’s website says.

There’s no indication at this point that Gasfrac is planning on moving into California’s Monterey shale formation, but residents and environmental organizations are moving ahead now to warn that its self-bestowed reputation as an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional fracking might not be what it’s cracked up to be.

via mintpressnews.com

L.A. Now Live: Latest on California prison hunger strike

Convicted killer Todd Ashker and three other inmates — representing the Mexican Mafia, Nuestra Familia and the Black Guerrilla Family — called for a mass hunger strike July 8, largely to protest indefinite incarceration in solitary confinement.

More than 30,000 prisoners answered.

Join us at 9 a.m. when we talk with Times reporter Paige St. John about the strike.

Though segregated from others, the leaders, who dub themselves the Short Corridor Collective, have kept the protest going, with more than 600 inmates still refusing food.

In the 1980s, the Department of Corrections started building high-security prisons with isolation blocks called "security housing units" — known by inmates as the SHU, pronounced "shoe.'' California now has four SHU prisons, holding more than 4,500 men whom the state calls "the worst of the worst."

The toughest facility was built at Pelican Bay State Prison near the Oregon border.

The Pelican Bay SHU is divided into pods of eight cells stacked four-wide and two-high, facing a blank wall. There are no bars. Each steel door is perforated to let in air and light.
Once a day, that door slides open. The prisoner can enter an empty concrete "dog run" for 90 minutes to exercise.

Kept indoors for years, men in the SHU take on a ghostly pallor, as if dusted with flour. They get less canteen food than do other inmates, less clothing, and are allowed limited belongings, fewer visits and no phone calls. Every privilege, from mail to medical care, is rationed.

For those accused of gang involvement, the SHU is an indefinite sentence. More than 400 have been inside Pelican Bay's SHU for more than a decade; 78 have been held there for more than two decades.

They have common complaints of anger, anxiety, depression, insomnia, inability to concentrate and loss of a sense of time, according to report by a psychiatrist retained by civil rights lawyers challenging the use of long-term solitary confinement.

The top prison gang leaders of California are held together in one wing of Pelican Bay, called the Short Corridor, on the theory that it is easier to control them in one place, corrections officials said.

As a result, the leaders of the strike have shared adjacent cells.

CA officials encourage Latino students to pursue higher education

Legislators and state officials extolled the power of education to a group of 120 students participating in the Chicano Latino Youth Leadership Project at the state Capitol on Wednesday.
 
High school juniors and seniors from across the state gathered in Sacramento for a weeklong leadership program that included meetings with lawmakers and mock policy debates.

Prominent Latino officials, like Anna Caballero Secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing agency and Diana Fuentes-Michel executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, encouraged the students to seek higher education. 

Caballero told the students her success would not be possible without education.
"Education is what opened the door to opportunities in my life," Caballero said. "To become a lawyer, to have my own business, to become the mayor of Salinas, to be elected to the state Assembly, and now to be appointed as a cabinet secretary to Gov. Jerry Brown."

More than 90 percent of the 3,800 students who have participated in the 31 years of the program have gone on to attend college. Alicia Vidales-Vera, a 17-year-old student from Wasco., hoped to become one of them.

Vidales-Vera's parents are farmworkers, who she said had to drop off her and her four siblings with a babysitter every day at 4 a.m. to get to work on time. Their struggle to support her family inspired her to apply to the program, she said. 

"I am a first-generation college bound, and I am inspired to attend a university," she said. "Without the support given to me by my family and friends, I would not be here today."

Speakers encouraged all students, including those who are undocumented, to apply to college.

"There is a place for you in our institutions of higher education of California and the California Student Aid commission will help you get there," Fuentes-Michel said.

Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, told the students that their success was not only important to their futures, but to the state's future as well. The Department of Finance projected that Latinos will become the largest ethnic group in California by 2014.

"When we now reemerge with a Latino plurality in our state, and as the secretary said, on our way to a Latino majority in this state, the future is here standing behind me," Dickinson said.

PHOTO: Chicano Latino Youth Leadership Program coordinator Diana Vasquez introduces student speakers at a press conference at the state Capitol on July 24, 2013. The Sacramento Bee/Annalise Mantz.

California health advocates renewing tobacco tax push

By Jeremy B. White — jwhite@sacbee.com

A coalition of health organizations is working to revive a proposed $2-a-pack tax on cigarettes in California.

Carried by Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, the bill would channel revenue from the new tax into health care and smoking prevention programs.

It is currently languishing on the suspense file. But Jim Knox, a lobbyist for the American Cancer Society, said the measure's supporters are "making another run at it."

"We're not taking no for an answer," Knox said. "We're going to push when we come back in August."

Representatives of the American Cancer Society and allies -- including the Service Employees International Union, Health Access, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association -- are meeting with lawmakers seen as potential swing votes during the summer recess. If advocates are unable to persuade legislators to take another look, Knox said the coalition will "more than likely" pursue a ballot initiative.

There are discussions under way, but we'd have to take a look more seriously if the Legislature decides to take a pass," Knox said.

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2013/07/24/2597688/capitol-alert-california-health.html#storylink=cpy

Legislative leaders have expressed reluctance to move aggressively on new taxes this session. In addition to the proposed tobacco tax, the Senate Appropriations Committee, which de León chairs, also tabled bills to raise more revenue from soda, oil extraction and plastic bags.

Mark Hedlund, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said De León's bill won't move from the suspense file this year.

"Come January we'll be starting to take a look at these various proposed tax measures," Hedlund said, "from this kind of measure to some of the constitutional amendments in regards to local taxation."

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2013/07/24/2597688/capitol-alert-california-health.html#storylink=cpy

$4.8M in home down payment aid to San Bernardino, Fontana, other cities

SAN BERNARDINO -- Wells Fargo Co. executives on Thursday announced a $4.8 million program to help people with home down payments here and in Fontana, Riverside, Moreno Valley and Corona.

The funding is the result of a 2012 legal settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, in which Wells Fargo agreed to provide $50 million to fund community involvement programs in Baltimore and seven metropolitan areas identified by the Justice Department as being the most in need of support to recover from the housing market crisis.

This money became the Wells Fargo CityLIFT program, which has helped more than 3,600 people become homeowners in 18 markets where the program has been introduced, said Milton A. Dellossier, a Covina-based Wells Fargo Home Mortgage regional manager.

The program could help place 320 homeowners in properties scattered around the five cities.

"We have all been drastically hit by the financial meltdown of 2007 and 2008," Morris said during an announcement of the program Thursday on the steps in front of San Bernardino City Hall. "During the height of that great recession, we had some 5,000 homes in foreclosure."

"This city has become a city of renters, not homeowners," Mayor Patrick Morris said of San Bernardino. "Renters move quite often and when they move their children go to a different school and then another. ... The effect on the education of children is large. Home ownership is a critical part of stabilizing a community."

The CityLIFT program will provide up to $15,000 in down payment assistance for first-time home buyers.

"Until we get the housing market completely fixed we are not going to get a complete recovery. This is why programs like this are so important," said John Husing, a Redlands-based economist who studies the Inland Empire.

Fontana and San Bernardino are each going to provide an additional $800,000 to the down payment pot, making it possible for someone to qualify for up to a $30,000 down payment, the mayors of both cities said.

Wells Fargo will work with administrators of the five cities and Neighborhood Housing Services of the Inland Empire to implement the program, officials said.

The Inland Empire CityLIFT program will include a free home buyer workshop at 10 a.m. Aug. 9 and Aug. 10 at the National Orange Show's Damus Building in San Bernardino.

Prospective home buyers should pre-register at href='http://www.wellsfargo.com/citylift'>wellsfargo.com/citylift as soon as possible to ensure that they can apply for the down payment grants on the workshop days, The CityLIFT program can be supplemented by individual city programs, said Dellossier.

"It's on a first-come basis," Dellossier said of the $4.8 million program. "We want to get that money out there fast."

The program allows a family of four to earn $76,430 annually and a one-person household to earn $53,550, according to a CityLIFT fact sheet. A four-person household, where annual income is $76,450 or less, could buy a $300,000 to $350,000 house, Dellossier said.

"Everyone I talk to says the down payment is the biggest obstacle (to home ownership)," said Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren. "We want to help existing people in Fontana get homes, but we will never turn down a family who wants to move into Fontana. Come on in, you know our motto."

David Edgar, Fontana's deputy city manager, said homeowners tend to maintain their property and become involved in their community. Another plus for home ownership in a city is that there tends to be fewer police calls to areas with high home ownership compared to rentals.

Edgar said that Neighborhood Housing Services and the San Bernardino County are working on an $800,000 grant to enable Fontana to beef up the down payment program.

Morris said that the San Bernardino City Council recently approved the use of a U.S. Housing and Urban Development grant to sweeten the pot in the Wells Fargo program.

In July 2012, Wells Fargo announced a settlement with the Justice Department to resolve claims that some Wells Fargo mortgages may have had a disparate impact on some African-American and Hispanic borrowers.

Wells Fargo agreed to pay $125 million to borrowers that the Justice Department believes were adversely affected by mortgages priced and sold by independent wholesale brokers.

The $50 million for what became the CityLIFT program was part of the Justice Department settlement.

via http://www.sbsun.com/sanbernardino/ci_23729033/wells-fargo-announces-4-8m-down-payment-assistance

AM Alert: California's mental health services examined

A topic close to the heart of Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg- mental health - is the focus of a significant amount of public agency activity today.

The Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, created by voters in 2004 via Proposition 63, meets in San Francisco to discuss integrating mental health care -- in particular for substance abusers -- into a statewide health care regime. Experts expected to testify include Barbara Garcia, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health; Sandra Naylor Goodwin, president of the California Institute for Mental Health; and Deputy Chief Louise Rogers of the San Mateo County health system.

The California Health Facilities Financing Authority also meets to discuss how to disperse millions of dollars in grants to help counties bolster their mental health services. That comes courtesy of Steinberg-spearheaded budget legislation signed earlier this year that seeks to invest more money in community-based mental health services and crisis response teams.

VIDEO: Andy Vidak's victory in the 16th Senate district sets off some electoral dominoes, Dan Walters says.

FIELD POLL: The latest in a series of Field Polls is out, examining California's relationship with potential presidential contender Hillary Clinton. The analysis is up online, and you can take a look at the data here.

TALKING TAXES: Much of the discussion of California's taxes is framed in terms of the Golden State's tax rates relative to those of other states (we're looking at you, Rick Perry and Phil Mickelson). A talk today by Professor Darien Shanske of UC Davis will take a look at the fiscal issues particular to different states, including a deeper dive into local finances throughout California. From noon to 1:30 p.m. at 1130 K Street.

STEM-CELL SCIENCE: The Independent Citizens Oversight Committee of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which has faced scrutiny over the process by which it awards grants, meets in Burlingame from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today. Among other topics, they'll examine their policy around compensating stem cell donors.

PHOTO: The exterior of the Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center photographed Wednesday, September 30, 2009. The Sacramento Bee/Carl Costas.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/07/am-alert-californias-mental-health-services-examined.html#storylink=cpy

via Sacramento Bee

California Teen Birth Rates Drop 60 Percent Thanks To Sex Education

California’s teen birth rate has dropped nearly 60 percent as a result of expanded sex education programs, according to a report released by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) on Wednesday.

The report –- which was based on data collected until 2011 -- revealed that the California teen birth rate reached a 20-year low that year. While in 1991, there were 70.9 births for every 1,000 teens aged 15-19, in 2011 this number decreased to 28 births per 1,000 teens.

Teen birth rates fell across all ethnic groups, according to the report. The Hispanic teen birth rate dropped from 73.6 in 2001 to 42.7 in 2011 –- although Hispanics continue to be the group with the highest teen birth rate. Teen birth rates for African-Americans, Whites and Asian-Americans also decreased significantly. 

Several factors contributed to the falling birth rates, the department said in a press release. One factor was the state’s school sex education program, which law requires to be comprehensive and medically accurate. The report also credits community-based education programs that provide sexual health information to teens and their parents.

“We do believe that our programs are behind these numbers,” Karen Ramstrom, the chief of the program standards branch at the California Department of Public Health’s maternal child and adolescent health division, told the Los Angeles Times. 

“California’s innovative strategies and community partnerships aimed at lowering teen pregnancy are helping young women and men make responsible choices,” Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the CDPH, said in a press release. “We must not be complacent; we must continue to promote teen pregnancy prevention programs and strategies in all communities.”

As Think Progress noted, California’s teen birth rate decreases are part of a national trend. The national teen birth rate dropped nearly 50 percent between 1991 and 2011, NBC's Today Health reported.

The nation's southern states continue to have some of the highest teen birth rates, Think Progress pointed out -- partially due to a lack of comprehensive sex education programs in many of those states.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article said that the state's teen pregnancy rates had dropped. It is the teen birth rates that have dropped.

via Huffingtonpost.com

Inmate Housing Facilities Planned for California

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) received authorization from 2012 Senate Bill 1022 to begin the process of designing and constructing three new dorm buildings at any of four existing correctional center locations, including California Institute for Men in Chino, California State Prison and Sacramento/Folsom State Prison in Represa, California State Prison and Solano/California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) in Ione or Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. Although planning has started, construction isn’t scheduled to begin until early 2014.

This project is a result of the 2011 state law requiring inmates who are non-violent and who have committed less serious offenses to be housed in local facilities. A restructuring of the classification system for inmates is resulting in a shift in the number of Level II and III inmates as well. “We’re expecting to have 7,000 inmates move from Level III to Level II. We need more beds,” said Dana Simas, information officer at CDCR.

The pending closure of the dilapidated California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) is another factor contributing to the growing need for more Level II inmate beds as those prisoners are transferred to other facilities.

The project is still in the early stages of development, and has several more rounds of planning to go through before any final decisions are made about the location of the new beds, according to Simas. Officials are considering several options for the placement of the facilities, including spreading the three dorm buildings across only two prisons.

Although discussions are still in progress about location and who the general contractor and architect will be, some things are certain. This project will increase the total number of Level II inmate beds in California by 2,376. The cost of building a double housing facility will be $533,792, while a single facility will cost $276,208.

Another perk to the project will be the addition of hundreds of new jobs. A double facility is expected to add 375 additional staff members, and a single facility will add 190. Simas said that the CDCR doesn’t anticipate facing any challenges with the future construction work yet, but did cite factors such as traffic, sewage and environmental elements as potential conflicts in the construction process.

via http://www.correctionalnews.com/articles/2013/07/17/inmate-housing-facilities-planned-california

California Ranks Among 10 Worst States for Child Welfare

by Anna Challet
Posted Monday, July 08, 2013 9:03 AM
 
From New America Media:
 
California came in at 41st in a nationwide ranking of children’s well-being, according to a report released last week.
 
The state ranked just ahead of Texas, which finished in 42nd place. New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts earned the highest rankings, while Nevada, Mississippi, and New Mexico ranked lowest.
 
The report, released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in partnership with Children Now, determined rankings by taking into account the state’s performance in 16 areas, including graduation rates, parental unemployment rates, and the percentage of children who are uninsured. California placed 41st in 2012 as well.
 
Jelena Hasbrouck, Children Now’s member recruitment manager, called the findings “alarming” and said they “signal a need for those in our state that want to improve children’s lives to collectively work together for greater impact.”

The state fared worst in children’s economic well-being, where it placed 46th in the nation. In recent years, California has worsened in all four areas that the study uses to determine economic well-being – the percentages of children living in poverty, children whose parents lack secure employment, children living in households with a high housing cost burden, and teens not enrolled in school who are unemployed.
 
Notably, over 50 percent of California’s children live in households with a high housing cost burden, compared to 40 percent of children nationally. Over 75 percent of children from low-income families in California live in households where housing costs exceed 30 percent of the family’s income.
 
Nearly one in four (23 percent) California kids lives in a family whose income is below the federal poverty level, up from 17 percent in 2007. Of those, 37 percent are American Indian, 34 percent are African American, 31 percent are Latino, 14 percent are Asian or Pacific Islander, and 10 percent are white. Seventeen percent are members of two or more races.

Yoga Could Boost Prisoners' Mental Health

Yoga: the secret to less-stressed, better-behaved prisoners?

A new study by researchers from Oxford University, King's College London, the University of Surrey and Radboud University Nijmegen may suggest so.

The findings, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, show that prisoners who completed a 10-week course in yoga had less stress and better moods, and also performed better on a behavior-control task compared with their non-yoga-doing peers.

"We're not saying that organizing a weekly yoga session in a prison is going to suddenly turn prisons into calm and serene places, stop all aggression and reduce reoffending rates," study researcher Dr. Amy Bilderbeck, of Oxford University, said in a statement. "We're not saying that yoga will replace standard treatment of mental health conditions in prison. But what we do see are indications that this relatively cheap, simple option might have multiple benefits for prisoners' wellbeing and possibly aid in managing the burden of mental health problems in prisons."

For the study, researchers had prisoners from a range of institutions, including a women's prison, an institution for young offenders and five category B and C prisons (in the UK, these prisons are considered "closed" prisons, but the most serious criminals are not housed here). Researchers had some of the prisoners recruited for the study do 90-minute yoga sessions for 10 weeks, while the other prisoners constituted the control group and didn't do any yoga. Before and after the 10 weeks, all the prisoners completed questionnaires to analyze their well-being, mood and stress levels. They also did a computer test to measure their behavior control.

Researchers found that the prisoners who did yoga had improvements in their mental health measures as well as better scores on the behavior control test, though more research is needed to see if the results on the behavior control test translate to better behavior while in prison and beyond.

Of course, it's not entirely surprising that yoga can have these kinds of mental health benefits. A wealth of past research has looked at how exactly yoga seems to have these effects on the mind, with one recent review of 124 studies from Duke University researchers confirming that yoga benefits people with depression, sleep problems, ADHD and schizophrenia (alongside drug therapy).

When Prisoners Protest

THERE aren't many protests in prison. In a world where authorities exercise absolute power and demand abject obedience, prisoners are almost always going to be on the losing side, and they know it.

The typical inmate doesn't want trouble. He has little to gain and too much to lose: his job, his visits, his recreation time, his phone privileges, his right to buy tuna, ramen and stale bread at inflated prices in the commissary. The ways even a bystander to the most peaceful protest can be punished are limited only by the imagination of the authorities. Besides, logistics are difficult: men from cell block X can’t just stroll down to see the inmates in cell block Y. Strategizing must be done furtively, usually through intermediaries, any one of whom might snitch.

And yet, sometimes things get so bad that prisoners feel compelled to protest, with work stoppages, riots or hunger strikes. On July 8, some 30,000 inmates in the custody of the California Department of Corrections went on a hunger strike to demand improvements in prison conditions. Their biggest complaint was the runaway use of solitary confinement, the fact that thousands of prisoners are consigned to this cruelty indefinitely, some for decades.

I know something about solitary confinement, because I’ve been there. I spent a total of 12 years in various solitary confinement cells. And I can tell you that isolating a human being for years in a barren cell the size of a small bathroom is the cruelest thing you can do to a person.

Deprived of all human contact, you lose your feeling of connectedness to the world. You lose your ability to make small talk, even with the guard who shoves your meal through the slot in the door. You live entirely in your head, for there is nothing else. You talk to yourself, answer yourself. You become paranoid, depressed, sleepless. To ward off madness, you must give your mind something to do. In 1970, I counted the 358 rivets that held my steel cell together, over and over. Every time the walls seemed to be closing in on me, I counted them again, to give my mind something to fasten on to.

There are men like Thomas Silverstein, in the federal prison system, who has been in solitary 30 years, and Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who have been in Louisiana cells for some 40 years each. These men become examples of abuse of power and sometimes a rallying point for their fellow prisoners, who know they could one day face the same fate.

The prison protests in California are on an unprecedented scale; amazingly, they involved, at their peak, about two-thirds of the state’s penal facilities. At the beginning of this week, more than 2,500 inmates were still refusing food.

If prison authorities do not understand why thousands of inmates not directly affected by solitary confinement would join the protests, at great risk to themselves, they have only themselves to blame. They are victims of their own censorship.

If they were to listen to the inmates, they would understand that protests are almost always the product of what prisoners perceive to be officials’ abuse of arbitrary power. They are generally done by men made desperate by the lack of options to address their grievances. At the heart of the problem is a lack of open communications and freedom of expression.

As a practical matter this is easy to resolve: institute mechanisms for authorities to meet regularly with inmates to discuss their problems without fear of reprisal. But this goes against entrenched attitudes, and too many officials see it as a surrender of their authority.

Too bad, because making responsible inmates partners in managing prison problems has worked extremely well in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where the warden and sub-wardens have, for decades, regularly met with inmate leaders to discuss problems. It has gone from being one of the bloodiest to one of the safest maximum security prisons in America.

And if prison officials actually listened to inmates, they would find that their demands are often reasonable. It goes without saying that some inmates must be isolated for security reasons. And the California protesters acknowledge as much. They don’t demand a total end to the use of solitary confinement, but only reasonable limits to who is locked up and for how long, as well as some simple improvements like more educational and rehabilitative programming for those in solitary.

Why should you be concerned about the inhumane conditions of prolonged solitary confinement, with all the social, emotional and mental deterioration that it entails? Well, every year men from California’s Pelican Bay and other supermax prisons around the nation are released directly from the vacuum of their cells into free society, to live and work among you and your loved ones. As a matter of self-preservation, maybe we should all join the prisoners’ request for rehabilitative opportunities that will improve the mental health of those in solitary.

Wilbert Rideau, who served nearly 44 years for manslaughter, mostly at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, is a journalist and the author of the memoir “In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance.”

via New York Times

In California, Taxpayers “Pay More But Get Less”

By Carl DeMaio

Former San Diego City Councilman

Monday, July 15th, 2013

The never-ending debate in California politics for the last 30 years has been pretty much gone something like this: Californians need to give government more money or drastic cuts in services will have to be made.

Leading voices in the two political parties have lined up on the extremes of that debate and proceed to tug back and forth. So after 30 years, where are we? An analysis of government spending compared to service levels provided shows both sides won – if you can call it that.

California citizens are paying more for state government than ever before, but still receiving less in services. In many key service areas, Californians are receiving less for their tax dollars than residents in other states and less than previous generations of Californians received for their tax dollars.

What’s worse, that trend is not likely to change, unless we convince Californians that simply throwing more money into broken system will somehow produce better results. If we want better performance, we must fix the broken system first – whether that’s in education, health care, criminal justice or something as simple as filling potholes.

A close analysis of government expenditures and service levels in top the top program areas of state government illustrates what I’m dubbing the “pay more, get less” phenomenon in California.

Take education, for example, which is the highest priority for Californians according to state polls. Between 2000 and 2010, Californians have given an inflation-adjusted 27.4% increase to total education funding and between 2000 and 2012 have given an inflation-adjusted 45.8% average pay increase to our teachers.

Unfortunately, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, during the same period of time, student achievement fell when compared to other states. In 2000, California ranked 36th in math, but in 2011 ranked 49th. In 2002, California ranked 42nd in reading, but in 2011 ranked 49th. This past year California placed 49th in science.

Despite spending more even after adjusting for inflation, California is also left with the highest pupil-teacher ratio in the country, at 24.12 vs. the national average of 15.97. In fact, California’s ratio has actually increased in the past 10 years up from 20.50 in 2002.

One of the biggest complaints I receive from San Diegans relates to the poor condition of our roads. Are we getting our bang-for-the-buck in state highway maintenance? Sadly, no.

Between 1998 and 2011, Californians have given an inflation-adjusted 66.23% increase in funding for state highway infrastructure, yet the condition of every category of our highways has worsened and traffic congestion has also gotten worse.

According to a 2013 Reason Foundation report, between 1989 and 2008, California spent double per mile what other states spent per mile on highway infrastructure — $5.84 million in California vs. $2.85 million nation-wide. Despite spending nearly double, California had the lowest improvements in highway infrastructure of all the states!

The “pay more, get less” theme is also playing out in the correctional system. Between 2000 and 2010, Californians have given an inflation-adjusted 42.3% increase for prisons. In 2011, California paid the second-highest average salary in the country for correctional officers – but still boasted the highest paid individual employee with a whopping $822,302 paid to a staff psychologist that year.

Despite the massive increase in overall funding going to the correctional system, Governor Brown in 2011 argued for and implemented “realignment” or early release for nearly 100,000 state prisoners. The result? In the first six months of the early release program, the number of paroled sex offenders who were fugitives rose 15 percent and property and violent crimes increased in 40 of 69 of California’s largest cities – the largest increase in 20 years.

There are a few areas where Californians are paying more and getting more – but not in the way some might want.

California boasts over 500 separate state agencies as of 2013 – and maintains programs for a variety of special areas. Take for example the California Horse Racing Board, which regulates horse racing and betting to the tune of $11.7 million a year with its government budget.

Some government services get multiple departments assigned to them. California is the only state with two separate agencies that collect sales and income taxes–the State Board of Equalization and the Franchise Tax Board. And both are bigger than the departments of revenue in any other state. A third agency – the Employment Development Department – also collects employment taxes.

Some of the biggest costs to Californians are hidden “off-budget.” Whenever a new regulation is imposed, it costs working families and small businesses to comply, monies that come out of our pockets for some assumed result.

Unfortunately, California state government does not maintain a “regulatory” budget to tally up the costs of government mandates and regulations. However, we do know California has the most regulated licensing system in the country – requiring licenses for 177 occupations versus the national average of 92 occupations.

Big government defenders argue that costs naturally increase, and so will government spending.   However, when adjusted for inflation, state government still has been given more money in each major program area.

Moreover, the notion that the cost of government services will always increase each year fails to account for the multitude of private sector service areas where costs have remained the same or even gone down in the past five, ten or even twenty years.

If Californians are to receive better government services at a more affordable price, we must demand several changes in how state and local government operate.

First, we must demand true performance-based budgeting be used in every state and local government agency. This requires the use of clear performance measures to track service results for California taxpayers. For each program, full “cost accounting” should be used to measure and report the cost-per-unit of service. With full transparency, taxpayers can better understand what they are really getting for their money.

Second, we must recognize that regulations have a cost to Californians who must pay for the burden of compliance. Just as we should insist on results from our tax dollars, we must also demand an accounting of costs and benefits of these regulations.

Most Californians support the notion that money paid directly to government through taxation should be limited – which is why voters have reserved the right to vote on any tax increases. Perhaps it is time to establish an annual limitation on “regulatory burden” imposed on Californians by government subject only to increase by a vote of the people. If such a limit were added to the state Constitution, for every new regulation imposed by legislators or bureaucrats, an older regulation would have to be replaced or reformed to save an equal amount of money.

Third, we must challenge our elected leaders from both political parties to rethink how government agencies operate from the bottom up. In each major service area of government, the evidence is mounting that the problem is not a lack of money, the problem is broken government processes that cost too much and deliver too little.

In some cases state rules actually prohibit the use of cost saving reforms – such as the rules prohibiting school districts from using competitive bidding to contract support services.

The past twenty years have seen a sea-change in private sector productivity through the use of new technologies, process improvements like Lean Six-Sigma, and competitive sourcing. It’s time to demand government use these same best management practices.

Fourth, even the most efficiently-designed government agency will waste money if the current pay and benefit packages for government employees are maintained. That’s why we must dramatically overhaul compensation for state and local government employees – starting with the reform of unsustainable state and local pension payouts.

Instead of across-the-board salary hikes, compensation should be based on each individual employee’s performance achievements. To encourage state and local government employees to devise and implement cost-saving ideas, taxpayers should support performance-based bonus pays – but only where audited and verified savings are achieved.

To get true performance improvements in California government, we must shift the political debate past what money we spend on programs to the more pressing question of how to transform how government operates.

Can we realistically do this?

Time will tell — but the last twenty years have demonstrated that the old mentality of simply throwing more money into these government agencies simply will not produce better results for Californians.

At some point, Californians will simply get tired of paying more and getting less.

Via: http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2013/07/in-california-taxpayers-pay-more-but-get-less/#sthash.I62Ce1xg.dpuf

Why California won't build prisons to ease inmate overcrowding

View of North Kern County State prison, Delano, California.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/07/14/3386690/why-california-wont-build-prisons.html#storylink=cpy

By David Siders — dsiders@sacbee.com

In his final effort to forestall a federal court order requiring the state to reduce its prison population by nearly 10,000 inmates, Gov. Jerry Brown last week counted the ways prison conditions have improved since the court first winced at overcrowding years ago.

Since 2008, Brown's administration said in a U.S. Supreme Court filing, California has diverted thousands of offenders from the prison system to counties and has spent more than $1 billion on new employees and facilities to improve mental health and medical care for inmates.

Despite pressure to relieve overcrowding, however, there is one thing the state has not done: build more prisons.

Following a construction binge in which the state opened about 20 prisons in the 1980s and 1990s, California has built only one traditional prison since 1997, in Delano in 2005.

The lack of construction reflects a dearth of public support for prison spending, as well as recession-era budget constraints.

"Look, everybody wants to send people to prison. Nobody wants to pay for it," Brown said in January, when he declared at a news conference that California had solved its prison crowding problem.

The governor said limited resources are better spent on education and rehabilitation, and there is "enough money in the criminal justice system."

The state appeared poised to spend substantially more in 2007, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers negotiated passage of Assembly Bill 900, a $7.9 billion plan to add 53,000 beds to the state and local corrections system and expand rehabilitation programs.

The prison-expansion plan was delayed by the recession. Then, following enactment of California's historic prison realignment – in which the state shifted responsibility for thousands of low-level offenders to counties – Brown largely halted it in 2012, anticipating savings of about $4.1 billion in building costs.

What is left of the prison-funding plan includes more than $1 billion to expand county jails. The administration said it has finished dozens of projects to improve dental clinics, medical care and mental health care facilities at its institutions, and it plans to build housing for more inmates on existing prison grounds.

That effort will not add overall capacity but could compensate for beds lost when the state closes a prison, the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, likely by 2016.

"Listen, I argued when I was the chairman of the subcommittee that oversaw state prisons … we were long overdue on building new prisons," said former Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, a Republican from Orange who was among AB 900's staunchest supporters. "I think the state has seriously abdicated its responsibility."

Brown: Progress ignored

The issue of capacity has become increasingly significant since 2009, when a three-judge panel found health care in the prison system to be unconstitutionally inadequate, primarily because of overcrowding.

The panel ordered the state to reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of capacity – an order the U.S. Supreme Court upheld – and in recent weeks demanded that California immediately comply. The order would force the state to reduce its inmate population by the end of the year to about 110,000 prisoners, down from about 119,000.

"The history of this litigation is of defendants' repeated failure to take the necessary steps to remedy the constitutional violations in its prison system," the panel wrote.

Brown last week asked the Supreme Court for a stay. Focusing on prison capacity, the administration argued, ignores steps the state has taken to resolve underlying conditions related to mental health and medical care.

Last month, for example, the state completed construction of an $839 million medical facility in Stockton to care for sick inmates.

"I ask you this: Does what you see behind me today, is that deliberate indifference?" Jeffrey Beard, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said at a celebratory event.

"We believe that we are providing at least a constitutional level of care, and in some cases more than a constitutional level of care to the inmates, and this facility will help us to continue to exceed a constitutional standard."

If not the court, the public is likely sympathetic to Brown's position. Voters approved more than $2 billion in general-obligation prison bonds between 1981 and 1990, during the height of prison construction under Gov. George Deukmejian.

But support for prison construction has receded in the years since, as the nonpartisan Field Poll has routinely found spending on corrections operations to be among Californians' lowest priorities.

"Deukmejian, you know, ran for governor on being tough on crime and locking up prisoners," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. "The question is, when did public support wane enough so that they wouldn't pass a prison bond, and it probably was in the 1990s."

Later decades have been marked by a historic decline in crime. The electorate is more concerned about education and the economy, and in this California is not unique.

"What we're seeing is not only a California trend that has been going on for about 20 years, but it's a national trend," said Barry Krisberg, former president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. "Every single public opinion poll that's been done over the past 20 years, nationally and in California and other states, shows the public is not interested in increasing the corrections budget."

Brown called 'a cheapskate'

Krisberg, who lectures at University of California, Berkeley, said one reason the public is disinterested in prison spending is its belief that prisons house a certain number of inmates who are not dangerous and could be put in alternative programs.

The impact of incarceration on recidivism and overall crime rates is debated, too.

"Beds don't reduce crime," said Donald Spector, director of the Prison Law Office, which represents inmates in the crowding case. "The more effective use of money is to try to punish prisoners in other ways while you're trying to correct their behavior so they don't do it again." He said, "I think Schwarzenegger was a little more moderate on this issue than (Pete) Wilson and Deukmejian, and Brown is more of a cheapskate than either of the two."

Among advocates of additional jail capacity has been the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union representing prison guards. Chuck Alexander, the group's executive vice president, said California will be forced by simple population growth to consider building more prison or jail space now that the budget is beginning to stabilize.

"As long as California's population continues to rise," he said, "you're going to need more housing, more schooling, more hospitals, more roads, more prison beds."

The prospect for funding construction of new prisons in the current Legislature is dim. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said last week that it would be "a public policy mistake for us to spend more money on building more jail beds as opposed to more mental health services or mental health beds outside the prisons."

State Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, said a majority of lawmakers are "oblivious to the crime wave and the injustices being visited upon the citizens they represent today by ignoring this solution of more facilities for incarceration." He said he'd rather spend money on prisons than high-speed rail.

Nielsen, a former state Board of Prison Terms chairman, acknowledged those lawmakers' view is consistent with public opinion, however. "I think that right at the moment, sadly, the public are not enough aware of the risk that they have been subjected to. They will be, and I predict once that critical moment occurs … there will be a stampede of, 'What in the world did you do this to us for?' "

Call David Siders, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1215. Follow him on Twitter @davidsiders. The Bee's Laurel Rosenhall contributed to this report.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/07/14/3386690/why-california-wont-build-prisons.html#storylink=cpy

Via FresnoBee