Repackaging Mass Incarceration

by JAMES KILGORE

Since my CounterPunch article last November which  assessed the state of the movement against mass incarceration, the rumblings of change in the criminal justice have steadily grown louder. Attorney General Eric Holder has continued to stream his mild-mannered critique by raising the issue of felony disenfranchisement; the President has stepped forward with a proposal for clemency for people with drug offenses that could free hundreds. In the media, we’ve seen a scathing attack on America’s addiction to punishment in the New York Times and the American Academy of Sciences has released perhaps the most comprehensive critique of mass incarceration to date, the 464 page The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. In late May, several dozen conservatives including Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and former NRA President David Keene pulled together the first Right on Crime (ROC) Leadership Summit in Washington DC.

The ROC, an organization which boasts a coterie of members with impeccable right wing credentials, reiterated the need for conservatives to drive the process of prison reform. The Conference  “call to action” argued: “In our earnest desire to have safer neighborhoods, policy responses to crime have too often neglected core conservative values — government accountability, personal responsibility, family preservation, victim restoration, fiscal discipline, limited government and free enterprise.” Gingrich engaged in similar kinds of soul searching:  “Once you decide everybody in prison is also an American then you gotta really reach into your own heart and ask, is this the best we can do?”

All of this has precipitated another round of optimistic cries about the possibilities of a Left-Right Coalition on mass incarceration, including a high profile Time Magazine op-ed co-authored by Norquist and MoveOn.org co-founder Joan Blades.

While the spirit of reconciliation in criminal justice attracts most of the media attention, a number of pieces have also emerged rejecting any rush to positive judgment.  For example, fellows at the Brennan Center compiled a statistically based report which contends that careral change has not yet turned the corner while Black Agenda Report co-founderBruce Dixon asserted that Obama’s clemency measures would have no significant impact on mass incarceration.

However, another process, likely at least as important in the long run as number crunching, coalitions or clemency also has been gaining steam. The official voices of incarceration- politicians, corrections officials, private prison operators, prison guards unions and county sheriffs, are exploring changing discourse and cosmetic reform in order to avoid systemic restructuring. In the business world, they call this re-packaging.

Re-Packaging Mass Incarceration: Carceral Humanism

Currently this re-packaging assumes several forms.  One of the most important is carceral humanism or what some people refer to as incarceration lite.  Carceral humanism recasts the jailers as caring social service providers. The cutting edge of carceral humanism is the field of mental health. According to a recent report by the Treatment Advocacy Center, in 2012 the US had over 350,000 people with serious mental health issues in prisons and jails as compared to just 35,000 in the remaining state mental health facilities.  Prisons and jails have become the new asylums and the jailers are waking up to the fact that mental health facilities also represent a new cash cow. Likely the most important examples of carceral humanism are happening in California. There Governor Jerry Brown has played a shell game called realignment in which he’s transferred thousands of people from state facilities to county jails in order to comply with a Federal court order to reduce the state prison population. To help counties adapt to all these new prisoners, the Governor put up $500 million to the state’s sheriffs to build extensions onto their jails. In response, the Sheriffs had to come to Sacramento to pitch for a slice of that money. They didn’t come talking about public safety. Their mantra focused on caring-providing opportunities and improved circumstances for those in custody. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s summary from Lake County, one of the 15 winners out of 36 submissions, is illustrative:

“$20 million for a new Type II, 40-bed women’s jail with a new stand alone 39-bed Medical/Mental Health Services building with program space, a new administration building, and renovations so that existing space can accommodate programs.”

The new jails are about institutionalizing the funding of mental health and other services behind the walls, further diverting money from the already bare bones social services in communities.  The Lake County proposal also featured another prominent strain of carceral humanism- a woman’s jail or in the present corrections jargon, a “gender-responsive” facility. Since mainstream research now argues that women experience incarceration differently than men, law enforcement is waving the gender banner to access more funding for construction.  Los Angeles lies at the cutting edge in this regard. In March the LA Board of Supervisors authorized $5.5 million for consultants to draw up a plan for what some law enforcement people are calling a “women’s village.” Deputy Sheriff Terri McDonald of Los Angeles suggested that the new facility could be a place where “women and children could serve their time together.”

Carceral humanism has also surfaced in the repackaging of immigration detention centers.  The latest immigration prisons carry the label “civil detention” centers. The GEO Group, the nation’s second largest private prison operator, opened their latest such facility in Karnes Texas. TheLA Times called it a “pleasant surprise for illegal immigrants.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials boast that people detained in Karnes won’t be housed in cells but in “suites” holding eight people.  Those detained will be supervised not by guards or correctional officers but by “resident advisers.”

Repackaging 2: Non-Alternative Alternatives to Incarceration

A second form of repackaging mass incarceration falls under the heading of non-alternative alternatives to incarceration. These non-alternatives purport to change things but in essence simply perpetuate the culture of punishment.  The most common forms of these are Drug Courts, Mental Health Courts and Day Reporting Centers. While many of these may be well-intentioned and in some cases have positive effects, they typically involve heavy monitoring of a person’s behavior including frequent drug testing, limitations on movement and association, a whole range of involuntary but supposedly therapeutic  programs of dubious value and very little margin of error to avoid reincarceration.  Perhaps the most extreme example of a non-alternative alternative to incarceration, and one which is likely to gain increasing traction, is electronic monitoring.

While advocates claim electronic monitoring facilitates employment, building family ties and participation in community activities, my interviews with a number of people on a monitor have revealed a different experience.  Jean – Pierre Shackelford, who spent two years on an ankle bracelet in Columbus, Ohio said that he felt like his probation officer had him in a “choke hold” while he was on an ankle bracelet. He labelled monitoring “another form of control and slavery, 21^st century electronic style.” Shaun Harris, on a monitor for a year in Michigan called it a form of privatized incarceration, “it’s like you just turned my family’s house into another cell” was his comment. Shackelford and Harris, like many others I spoke with, both reported difficulty getting movement for family activities and a lack of clarity about what was and wasn’t permitted.  Shackelford finally took to going to church because that seemed to be the only activity his probation officer would approve.  Both Shackelford and Harris, like most people interviewed, complained that they could be put on 24 hour “lockdown” (meaning they couldn’t leave the house at all) for any reason for an indefinite period and there would be no way to appeal such a decision.  Even a late return home from work due to a delay in public transportation could result in a re-arrest. To make matters worse, most electronic monitors come with a daily user fee which ranges anywhere from five to twenty dollars a day.

While the punitive nature of ankle bracelet regimes is a cause for concern, the potential to implement exclusion zones with GPS-based monitors contains more serious long-term implications.  Exclusion zones are places where monitors are programmed not to let people go.  At the moment authorities mainly use exclusion zones to keep individuals with a sex offense history away from schools and parks. But such zones have the potential to become new ways to reconstruct the space of our cities, to keep the good people in and the bad people out.  This technology, which can be set up via smart phones, holds the possibility to turn houses, buildings, even neighborhoods into self-financing sites of incarceration.  In the meantime, firms like the GEO Group, which owns BI Incorporated, the nation’s largest provider of electronic monitoring technology and backup services, are experimenting with new target groups for ankle bracelets. In parts of California and Texas they’ve used electronic monitors on kids with school truancy records. Under a $370 million contract, BI already has thousands of people awaiting immigration adjudication on monitors. Packaged as an alternative these bracelets actually represent a new horizon for incarceration, finding ways to do it cheaper with technology through the private sector and then getting the user to pay, likely a  model that would line up squarely with Right on Crime’s notions of reform..

Re-Packaging: Why Now?

Most commentators attribute the spirit of change in criminal justice to a belated recognition of the fundamental irrationality of spending so much money locking up so many people for so long.  As Grover Norquist put it, “Conservatives may have wanted more incarceration than was necessary in the past, so what we’re trying to do is find out about what works.”

Such analyses make perfect sense but they also ignore a big picture political question. Mass incarceration is becoming a flash point of rebellion and resistance, with African American communities the most visible hot spot. Mass incarceration and the racialized vagaries of criminal justice have been going on for decades but recently we’ve seen new levels of anger and frustration in reaction to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant, as well as to the sentencing of Marissa Alexander.  Even mainstream Black commentators like Melissa Harris-Perry appear incensed.  At the grassroots level we’ve witnessed campaigns against stop and frisk, solitary confinement, mandatory minimums, crack cocaine laws and a host of new jails and prisons.  On the ideological plane, the notion of the New Jim Crow, categorizing  mass incarceration as a new form of slavery and segregation is catching on.  People are latching onto the idea of mass incarceration as a systemic problem that can only be solved with a vast redirecting of resources into the communities that have been devastated by imprisonment.  In other words, mass incarceration requires a total paradigm shift. The situation has the potential to explode.  Politicians and business people don’t like explosions.  When explosions appear a genuine possibility it is time to talk reform, time to re-package.

To make matters worse for purveyors of the carceral status quo, the immigrants’ rights movement has also been erupting over the last decade. From the immigrant worker strikes and demonstrations of 2006 to the endless string of demonstrations by the Dreamers and the Dream Defenders in the face of continued mass deportations, a steady stream of unrest has materialized.  With the changing national demographics, key players in criminal justice need to be seen to be doing something if they want to maintain their power.

Lastly, there is the movement inside the prisons themselves.  The hunger strikes at Pelican Bay in California and in Washington’s Northwest Detention Center coupled with the outpouring of solidarity these actions prompted,  pose a serious threat to the already heavily smeared image of US prisons. In addition, even once notorious political prisoners are gaining increasing legitimacy. Captives from across several generations are attracting large coteries of supporters.  This includes high profile individuals who have served decades behind bars, individuals  like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Albert Woodfox, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Russell Maroon Shoatz and Leonard Peltier, along with more contemporary prisoners like Lynne Stewart (recently released), Marie Mason and Chelsea Manning. Inside and beyond the walls, there is rebellion in the air.

This reality raises another question: whether a Left-Right Coalition can deliver even enough change to calm the waters. Mass incarceration has become such a fundamental part of how the US addresses issues of race, crime, poverty, gender and inequality, it appears unlikely to collapse from gradual reforms whether inspired by carceral humanism, punitive alternatives to incarceration or more genuine critique. As with civil rights, pressure from below will be required, from a social movement that has the creativity to envision an alternative, the skills and legitimacy to mobilize the people who are most directly affected, and the political power to make their voices be heard and get others to join them. Perhaps this social movement is, to borrow a phrase from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, making the path by walking at this very moment.

James Kilgore is a Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign).  He is a frequent commentator on mass incarceration, a social justice activist, and the author of three novels, all of which were written during his six and a half years of incarceration.  He is currently working on a primer on mass incarceration to be published by The New Press in 2015. He can be reached at waazn1@gmail.com   His writings are available at his website, www.freedomneverrests.com

via: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/06/repackaging-mass-incarceration/

California Senate passes bill to ban sterilizing prison inmates

California jails and prisons would be forbidden from sterilizing inmates for the purpose of birth control under a bill the state Senate passed Tuesday.

Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, wrote Senate Bill 1135 after theCenter for Investigative Reporting found that over a five-year period, doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates without required state approvals. Former inmates and their advocates said that prison officials coerced women into consenting to the procedures if the officials thought they were likely to return to prison.

"This measure is absolutely necessary to make sure sterilizations are not performed in a coercive prison environment," Jackson told senators Tuesday.

The bill spells out limited circumstances in which prisons would be allowed to sterilize an inmate, such as if it is necessary to save her life. It passed the Senate with unanimous support and now heads to the Assembly for consideration.

PHOTO: Former Valley State Prison for Women inmate Kimberly Jeffrey with her son Noel, 3, shown in June 2013. During her imprisonment in 2010, Jeffrey says a doctor pressured her to agree to be sterilized, but she refused. Noah Berger/ For The Center for Investigative Reporting

via: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/05/27/3947170/capitol-alert-california-senate.html

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/05/27/3947170/capitol-alert-california-senate.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/05/27/3947170/capitol-alert-california-senate.html#storylink=cpinmate, such as if it is necessary to save her life. It passed the Senate with unanimous support and now heads to the Assembly for consideration.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/05/27/3947170/capitol-alert-california-senate.html#story

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Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/05/27/3947170/capitol-alert-california-senate.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/05/27/3947170/capitol-alert-california-senate.html#storylink=cpy

TAFT Correctional Facility to Reopen

TAFT, CA - Taft's Community Correctional Facility will reopen within the next two months. The city council approved a contract with L.A. County Tuesday to house its inmates. The agreement will bring back dozens of job and millions of dollars to the city of Taft.

Taft's Correctional Facility has sat empty for two years, but now it's about to reopen.

"This is a huge weight lifted off our shoulders," said Taft Mayor, Paul Linder.

In a unanimous vote, the Taft City Council approved a contract with L.A. County to house up to 512 low-level offenders for the next five years. 

"It's a relief. It's a big relief," said Taft Police Chief Ed Whiting. "Personally, I don't see why a jail should sit empty."

The state stopped housing inmates in the facility in November 2011, which cost the city money and jobs. Now, most of that is coming back.

According to the contract, Taft will add about 62 positions and get more than $11 million a year from L.A. County.

"This is good for them. It's good for us. It's also good for the inmates," said Chief Whiting.

Taft's Police Chief said it's good because the extra bed space will allow L.A. County to ease its jail overcrowding, and the inmates in Taft will have the option to work in the community like Kern County inmates, either picking up trash or doing road work.

"It gives the inmates something to do except sit in the cell all day," said Chief Whiting. "They'll get to work, and they'll get credit towards their release."

A work release Taft couldn't have done if they would have agreed to house the state inmates the California Department of Corrections wanted to send to Taft.

"It's just a better deal, and we're trying to the do the best for the community," said Mayor Linder.

"It took a lot of work on both ends and we're finally happy it's come together," said Chief Whiting.

Inmates could start coming to Taft as soon as November 18.

Check out video at: http://www.kget.com/news/local/story/Taft-correctional-facility-to-reopen/r6ZF7zgae0mQpcvOmv9xzQ.cspx

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.

Hunger strikes give inmates huge platform for protests

SACRAMENTO -- For inmates in solitary confinement in California prisons, there are very few ways to send a message to the outside world. Phone calls are not allowed, and letters are read by prison officials before they’re dropped in the mail. Internet access is banned.

So inmate leaders say they're launching a new hunger strike to protest conditions at lockups around the state.

The last time they organized such an effort was two years ago. The hunger strike eventually spread to thousands of inmates at one-third of the state’s prisons.

A core group of 400 prisoners continued the protest for about three weeks, some losing about 30 pounds.

The hunger strike led to some small changes, like allowing inmates to buy wall calendars and sweat pants. Prison officials also agreed to change their policies on solitary confinement, such as requiring proof of gang-related behavior rather than mere association with prison gang members.

However, indefinite confinement remains a possibility, and only 400 currently isolated inmates have had their cases reviewed under the new criteria.

The security housing units at Pelican Bay and three other prisons isolate about 4,500 inmates who officials say have gang ties, or committed further crimes within prison.

The latest statewide protest, which began Monday, could dwarf the 2011 protest. So far 30,000 inmates at two-thirds of the state’s prisons and four out-of-state facilities have begun refusing meals. Prison officials say they do not officially recognize the hunger strike until inmates have missed nine consecutive meals.

In addition to the core demands for an end to indefinite solitary confinement, some inmates are seeking warmer clothes and better cleaning supplies for their cells. Others have broader goals, including changes to sentencing laws to end mandatory minimums and indefinite solitary confinement.

By Chris Megerian

July 9, 2013, 12:36 p.m.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/political/la-me-pc-hunger-strikes-give-inmates-huge-platform-for-protests-20130709,0,4234243.story

Support the Strike!

Unless the Governor and the Department of Corrections take decisive action, prisoners throughout California will resume a hunger strike and work stoppage ONE WEEK FROM TODAY to protest the torturous conditions in solitary confinement--and other parts of the prison system.  

Stand in Solidarity with the Hunger Strike and other Job Actions Being Called for July 8th!

Communities across the state, country, and world plan on taking action to help the strikers win their demands.

Sign up for updates at prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com.

Wherever you are, please take some form of action on July 8th.  Big or small, every voice counts!

Click here for more: http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/take-action-2/add-your-event/

And, please support the statewide mobilization to Corcoran State Prison on July, 13!  Details below.

Mobilization to Support the Prisoner Hunger Strikes

Corcoran State Prison

Saturday July 13, 2013

Rides available by bus and carpool. Contact rachel-at-criticalresistance.org or 510-444-0484

Caravans will leave from MacArthur BART in Oakland at 9:00 AM and Chuco’s Justice Center in Inglewood at 9:00AM. We will gather at Cesar Chavez Park in Corcoran (1500 Oregon) at 2PM and then march to Corcoran State Prison  where our demands will be heard!

In 2011, over 12,000 California state prisoners engaged in a hunger strike to end long term solitary confinement and to demand changes to the way that prisoners are assigned to torturous cells, known as the SHU (security housing units). Although the Department of Corrections acknowledged that their demands were reasonable and would be addressed - very little has changed for California prisoners since 2011. California is still spending millions of dollars a year to keep people in solitary confinement for decades!

Statewide Hunger Strikes Resume

On July 8, 2013 California Prisoners will begin an indefinite hunger strike and work strike until meaningful changes are made within the Department of Corrections.

On July 13, 2013 we will rally at Corcoran State Prison to show our support for the prisoners and pressure Jerry Brown to meet their demands! Like Pelican Bay, Corcoran isolates nearly 2,000 people in solitary confinement.

________________________________________

How You Can Support

We need your support now more than ever! Please consider making a donation to our coalition so that we can continue to fight for the human rights of people in extreme isolation in California prisons.  Funds collected will be used for the July 13th mobilization in addition to other coalition expenses such as monthly mailings to prisoners, legal visits to Pelican Bay and Corcoran and other printing expenses.

Donations can be made online at www.prisons.org; be sure to click the “Special Instructions” link and write “PHSS” to direct your donation to us.  Or you can write a check to California Prison Focus/PHSS and mail it to PHSS 1904 Franklin Street #507, Oakland, CA 94612.  We could also use donations of such as food and water for the July 13 mobilization, as well as vans or buses for the caravan to Corcoran.  Please contact Rachel Herzing, rachel-at-criticalresistance.org or call 510-444-0484 if you would like to offer assistance in these areas.

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY: Jail expansion tab rises $10 million more

San Bernardino County supervisors are expected to approve a $10 million increase for the Adelanto jail expansion on Tuesday, June 25, because of project costs that continue to increase.

The change order is the latest in a series that have boosted the project budget from $120 million, when the contract was awarded in December 2010, to $144 million.

It also will mean a delay in the completion of the jail, which originally had been expected to be finished by this fall and now is scheduled to be done by late January 2014.

Last month, the board approved an $8 million increase to the jail project budget and in February signed off on a $6 million increase. The item for the latest changes is on the Board of Supervisors’ consent calendar, a list of usually non-controversial items that can be approved on a single vote.

Board Chairwoman Janice Rutherford said she’s not happy with the cost increases but said the county’s focus is on getting the project done by the late January deadline, which is a condition of state funding.

“I hope this is it,” she said. “We’ve said that in the past and additional problems have cropped up so fingers crossed.”

As with the previous change orders, the main reason for the increase was design problems with the smoke control and fire sprinkler system, said Carl Alban, director of the county's architecture and engineering department. Resolving those problems also caused delays that increased costs for other construction on the project, he said.

Another increase was because of a water well that had a high level of fluoride that required additional treatment. The well will supply drinking water to the facility.

The county was awarded state funding for three-quarters of the cost of the project, up to $100 million, as part of a $1.2 billion jail construction bill approved by the state Legislature in 2007.

The latest increase puts the state’s share of the projects costs at the $100 million threshold, with the county picking up the remaining $44 million. Any more increases will be the sole responsibility of the county instead of being split with the state, as has been done so far, Alban said.

The project consists of three four-story housing buildings plus a support building that includes booking and holding cells and a medical clinic.

The expansion comes at a time when the county jails have been dealing with crowding because of the state’s realignment law that shifted to county jails some prisoners who would have gone to state prisons.

Between January 2012 and last week, 6,932 prisoners have been released early because of crowding, sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said.

The county’s four jails have a capacity of about 6,000 prisoners. The Adelanto project will add 1,392 beds to the existing 706-bed jail, but sheriff’s officials plan to move into the new facility in phases. County officials still are working on a plan to pay for the $37.9 million in ongoing costs to staff the new jail.

Via Press Enterprise BY IMRAN GHORI June 24, 2013; 05:20 PM 

http://www.pe.com/local-news/politics/imran-ghori-headlines/20130624-san-bernardino-county-jail-expansion-tab-rises-10-million-more.ece

Federal judges order California to free 9,600 inmates

SACRAMENTO — A trio of federal judges ordered Gov. Jerry Brown to immediately begin freeing state inmates and waived state laws to allow early releases, threatening the governor with contempt if he does not comply.

Citing California's "defiance," "intransigence" and "deliberate failure" to provide inmates with adequate care in its overcrowded lockups, the judges on Thursday said Brown must shed 9,600 inmates —about 8% of the prison population — by the end of the year.

Unless he finds another way to ease crowding, the governor must expand the credits that inmates can earn for good behavior or participation in rehabilitation programs, the judges said.

"We are willing to defer to their choice for how to comply with our order, not whether to comply with it," the judges wrote. "Defendants have consistently sought to frustrate every attempt by this court to achieve a resolution to the overcrowding problem."

If Sacramento does not meet the inmate cap on time, the judges said, it will have to release prisoners from a list of "low risk" offenders the court has told the administration to prepare.

Brown had already taken steps to appeal the court-imposed cap to the U.S. Supreme Court, and he vowed to fight the latest ruling as well.

"The state will seek an immediate stay of this unprecedented order to release almost 10,000 inmates by the end of this year," he said in a statement.

He had immediate backing from the California Police Chiefs Assn. The court order shows "a complete disregard for the safety of communities across California," said the group's president, Covina Police Chief Kim Raney.

"Pressing for 9,000 more inmates on the streets," Raney said, shows "an activist court more concerned with prisoners than the safety of the communities."

But a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it did not expect to have to contend with a flood of ex-convicts to watch over.

"It is never a positive step when prisoners have to be released," said spokesman Steve Whitmore, "but the Sheriff's Department is prepared for this eventuality."

Brown has until July 13 to file his full appeal with the high court, the same body that two years ago upheld findings that California prison conditions violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Lawyers for inmates, meanwhile, said Brown has few options but to let some prisoners go.

"At this point, the governor is an inch away from contempt," said Don Specter, lead attorney for the Prison Law Office, which in 2001 filed one of two lawsuits on which the judges based their order. "He must make every effort to comply immediately."

In May, Brown told the court under protest that he could further trim the prison population by continuing to use firefighting camps and privately owned facilities to house state inmates, and by leasing space in Los Angeles and Alameda county jails. In that plan, increasing the time off that inmates may earn for good behavior would have had little impact.

Thursday's order requires, absent other solutions, that the state give minimum-custody inmates two days off for every one served without trouble and to apply those credits retroactively. Such a step could spur the release of as many as 5,385 prisoners by the end of December.

A separate lawsuit, dating to 1990, alleges unconstitutionally cruel treatment of mentally ill inmates. That the courts are still trying, after two decades, to fix prison conditions was not lost on the three-judge panel that oversees prison crowding, U.S. District Judges Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson and U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

Their order accuses the state of "a series of contumacious actions" and challenges Brown's sincerity about obeying their orders. They noted that the governor lifted an emergency proclamation that allowed inmates to be transferred to prisons in other states, for example.

Requests from prison lawyers that the administration be held in contempt "have considerable merit," the judges wrote.

The governor's reluctance to set prisoners free early has the backing of legislative leaders, including Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). He joked openly on Wednesday about intending to kill any population-reduction plans the courts might order the governor to submit to the Legislature.

Republicans in the Legislature have pushed a plan to resume prison expansion in California.

In April, they urged Brown to restore borrowing authority that would have allowed 13,000 beds to be added. They also asked that he continue to pay to house some prisoners in private facilities in the interim. Brown did not include such provisions in the budget that is now on his desk.

The judges said there could be no delays in compliance with their order for appeals or for amendments to the plan Brown submitted in May.

They rejected state officials' assertion that "with more time, they could resolve the problem."

California voters may be more willing than Brown to release inmates to reduce crowding. In a recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, they were wary of sacrificing public safety, but at the same time supported steps to reduce crowding.

Sixty-three percent said they favored releasing low-level, nonviolent offenders from prison early.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

Times staff writers Chris Megerian and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ff-brown-prisons-20130621,0,6492733.story

California prisons object to expanding media access to inmates

California prison officials are opposing legislation that would increase media access to inmates, saying it would cost too much money to facilitate interviews.

In a letter dated Thursday, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the bill would "create significant new costs and increase workload."

Emily Harris of Californians United for a Responsible Budget, which opposes heavy prison spending, said officials are overstating the costs in hopes of persuading budget-cutting lawmakers to scuttle the legislation.

"This is a last-minute effort to quash the bill," she said.

The bill has already passed the Assembly 47 to 22, and it was approved by a Senate committee last month.

Reporters are able to tour prisons and interview inmates during their visits, but they are not allowed to request interviews with specific inmates unless they arrange to meet them during visiting hours. That means high-profile criminals like Charles Manson and newsmakers like the inmates who organized a hunger strike to protest prison conditions are often beyond the reach of the media.

The legislation, sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would change that, requiring officials to process interview requests within 48 hours. Officials would also need to notify the inmates' victims that an interview was taking place.

Similar legislation has circulated in the Capitol before. It was vetoed in 2006 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said policies in place already allowed the "free flow of information from the prison environment into the outside world." He also said "it is important to avoid treating inmates as celebrities."

Ammiano said the prison system's opposition was disappointing.

“It comes down to transparency," he said. "We have a right to know how prisons are operating on the inside.”

Terry Thornton, a prison spokeswoman, said reporters have enough opportunities to see prisons from the inside. Most of the interview requests the department receives involve celebrity inmates or sensational crimes, not prison conditions, she said.

Officials allowed one interview request this year when it involved a federal inmate in state prison, costing $437, Thornton said. The department receives a couple of hundred interview requests each year, she said, and officials expect that number to increase if the legislation passes.

At that rate, 500 interviews would cost $218,500, about 0.002% of the department's $8.86-billion budget.

 -- Chris Megerian in Sacramento

twitter.com/chrismegerian

Photo: Pelican Bay State Prison, California's highest-security prison. Credit: John Burgess / Associated Press

Via LATimes