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/

Senate Dems push for spending on mentally ill criminals

As budget negotiations reach their final weeks in the state Capitol, state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg is pressing for more spending to treat mental illness among inmates and people being released from prison, arguing that the proposals will reduce prison crowding and promote public safety.

The proposals by Senate Democrats to spend $132 million on reducing recidivism among mentally ill offenders are based on suggestions by professors at Stanford Law School, who studied the proliferation of mental illness within California’s prison population. Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed $91 million in spending.

The Senate Democrats’ package comes as lawmakers respond to Friday’s rampage near UC Santa Barbara in which a disturbed student killed six people and injured 13 in a spree of stabbing and shooting.

“These proposals finalized earlier this month are now cast under a different light than any of us had originally planned,” Steinberg said during a news conference Wednesday. “It’s a cruel and of course sad coincidence that the significance of one proposal – to improve training among front line law enforcement to recognize the warning signs of mental illness – was illustrated by a gun rampage in Santa Barbara County.”

The proposals from Senate Democrats include:

• $12 million to train law enforcement officers and $24 million to train prison employees in dealing with people who are mentally ill

• $25 million to expand re-entry programs for mentally ill offenders

• $20 million to help parolees by providing case managers to make sure they get treatment for mental health issues and substance abuse

• $20 million to expand so-called mental health courts that manage offenders who are mentally ill or addicted to drugs

• $50 million to re-establish a grant program for counties offering substance abuse treatment, job training or other programs to help mentally ill offenders after they’re released from prison.

via: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/05/28/6440139/senate-dems-push-for-spending.html#mi_rss=State%20Politics

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/05/28/6440139/senate-dems-push-for-spending.html#mi_rss=State%20Politics#storylink=cpy

State begins early releases of nonviolent prisoners

SACRAMENTO — The state is releasing some low-level, nonviolent prisoners early as Gov. Jerry Brown complies with a federal court order to reduce crowding in its lockups — a turning point in the governor's efforts to resolve the issue.

Inmates serving time for certain nonviolent crimes are being discharged days or weeks before they were scheduled to go free, a move that Brown had long resisted but proposed in January and was subsequently ordered by judges to carry out.

Eventually, such prisoners, who are earning time off their sentences with good behavior or rehabilitation efforts, will be able to leave months or even years earlier.

Prison workers, inmates' lawyers and county probation officials said the releases began two weeks ago. Since then, San Bernardino County probation officers said, the number of felons arriving from prison has increased more than two dozen a week, or 30%.

L.A. County Deputy Probation Chief Reaver Bingham said he did not know how many prisoners had been released early to his jurisdiction.

Corrections officials confirmed that some inmates are being released "slightly earlier" but would not say how many or discuss the criteria used to determine who is eligible.

Officials are still working on the terms of other planned steps to reduce crowding, including making more inmates eligible for medical parole and a new release program for those older than 60.

In addition, some second-time offenders who have served half their sentences under the state's three-strikes law could be eligible to leave.

Brown's administration has estimated that 780 inmates could be released under those programs.

Sentence reductions were among the changes Brown offered to make as he sought two more years to reduce prison crowding to a level the judges deem safe. He wants to meet the jurists' targets mostly by placing more felons in privately owned prisons and other facilities.

In February, the judges granted Brown's request and ordered him to "immediately implement" the early releases and add parole options for prisoners who are frail, elderly or serving extended sentences for specific kinds of nonviolent crimes.

Analysts in Brown's administration initially estimated that about 1,400 prisoners would be freed early over two years by being allowed to shave off as much as a third of their sentences with good behavior.

From prison, they follow the normal path to either state parole or county supervision, depending on the crimes they committed.

"Our first 'Whew!' moment was when we realized it was not anybody we wouldn't [be getting] already," said Karen Pank, a lobbyist for California's 58 county probation departments.

More than 17,000 prisoners overall are potentially eligible for reduced sentences, according to the administration's analysis.

Pank said the administration was negotiating with counties over whether to pay them additional money to supervise those who are sent to probation early.

Eligibility rules for the court-ordered parole programs have not been made public. A Board of Parole Hearings meeting on the matter was held last week behind closed doors, according to an agenda posted online by the board.

Ordinarily, such major changes to the state's criminal justice system would be debated before the Legislature, but the federal judges have set aside those requirements.

"We don't have many options to weigh in on the consequences of what is being put in place," Pank said.

If California misses any of the court's interim deadlines for easing crowding, a court-appointed officer has authority to order additional releases.

State lawyers said in an April 15 court filing that officials have already met the court's June 30 benchmark, its first since the judges gave Brown extra time.

The judges set a limit on the inmate population of 143% of the prisons' capacity; the state's attorneys said the latest population was 141%.

Lawyers for prisoners argued in a court motion last week that the state was counting empty beds in a medical prison in calculating its capacity to house inmates, permitting other prisons to remain crowded. The corrections department contends the medical space should be included.

The latest prison population reports from the government show a women's prison in Chowchilla is at 183% of its capacity. Corrections officials have confirmed an inmate lawyer's report that as many as eight women at a time share dorm rooms that have a single toilet, sink and shower.

"There is one person on top of another.... It is a pressure cooker simmering," said attorney Rebekah Evenson of the Prison Law Office, which represents inmates in class-action litigation over prison conditions.

Corrections spokeswoman Krissi Khokhobashvili said crowding in women's prisons will ease when a private lockup in McFarland opens to take 520 female inmates.

In a conference call Tuesday with financial analysts, executives of the company that owns the McFarland facility said it would not be ready to take the first 260 women until the fall.

They said state officials had not yet requested the remaining 260 beds.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-prison-release-20140430,0,122976.story#ixzz30UUQewyl

Meet The Companies That Just Promised To Pull 60 Million Dollars From Private Prisons

Three investment groups announced this week that they will divest from the two major private prison corporations that constitute a massive share of America’s prison-industrial complex.

Scopia Capital, DSM, and Amica Mutual Insurance have all pledged to remove their collective investments of about $60,000,000 from the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group — the two prison companies that own 75 percent of the nation’s private prisons. The decision to divest comes on the heels of pressure from Color Of Change, a racial and economic justice advocacy group that ran a campaign asking a total 150 companies to stop investing in the private prison industry.

“In accordance with the principles of the UN Global Compact, with respect to the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights, the pension fund has divested from the for-profit prison industry,” DSM President Hugh Welsh said in a Color of Change statement. “Investment in private prisons and support for the industry is financially unsound, and divestment was the right thing to do for our clients, shareholders, and the country as a whole. DSM is committed to good corporate citizenship and operating in a way that contributes to a better world.”

Sixty million dollars is actually a drop in the bucket for GEO and CCA. The groups together earn over three billion dollars annually on private prisons, and even more on immigrant detention centers. But the move signals a growing distrust in the ballooning private prisons industry, which grew by “approximately 1600% between 1990 and 2009,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Other groups have previously reportedly divested, as well, but this may be the largest single successful divestment campaign.

“It’s an important first step,” said Carl Takei, the private prison expert in the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “To the extent that investment firms are committing themselves publicly to divestment, that is a very important step. To the extent that investment firms are deciding that private prisons are a bad investment, that’s even more important.”

CCA lost four of its prison contracts with states last year — and that combined with slowly falling imprisonment rates may actually make private prisons not just morally questionable but financially unstable, Takei pointed out.

“We’ve started to turn the corner on mass incarceration and if that’s something that makes private prisons a bad investment, that’s important,” Takei added. He said that if investment firms chose to divest for ethical reasons, it is “an important first step,” but that “the financial reasons justification would be huge.”

Studies have found that private prisons spend millions on lobbying to send more people to jail for longer periods of time. The facilities are often rife with abuse and neglect, too; accusations against the companies range from wrongful death to bad sanitation and even forcing a woman to give birth in a toilet. They do no favors for states that support them, either; Idaho was one of the places that ended its contract with CCA after the company handed over a $1 million settlement for falsifying staff hours and leaving mandatory monitoring spots unattended.

Judges appoint prison population oversight chief

A panel of three federal judges on Wednesday appointed Elwood Lui, a former associate justice of the California Court of Appeal, as the “compliance officer” empowered to begin releasing state prison inmates if California fails to meet court ordered deadlines to reduce its prisoner population.

Lui was one of two candidates for the position suggested by lawyers representing the state. He has agreed to serve without compensation but to have reasonable expenses reimbursed, according to the order from the panel issued Wednesday afternoon.

The compliance officer position was created through a Feb. 10 order by the court, which comprises 9th U.S. Circuit Court Judge Stephen Reinhardt, Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the San Francisco-based Northern District of California and Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of the Sacramento-based Eastern District of California.

The judges originally ordered California in 2009 to cut its inmate population to 137.5 percent of capacity, but appeals delayed that and resulted in the Feb. 10 order giving the state two more years to comply.

The February order also gave the compliance officer authority to release the necessary number of inmates to ensure that California meets the court-ordered deadlines.

The compliance officer now has the authority to release inmates if the prison population is not cut to 143 percent of capacity by June 30 (or 116,651 inmates); to 141.5 percent by Feb. 28, 2015 (115,427 inmates); and to 137.5 percent a year after that (112,164 inmates).

Last month, the state told the court that its prison population is about 502 inmates above the June 30 benchmark. The state indicated that it expected to get below the 143 percent mark before the deadline by using some contract prison cells.

Attorneys for the state and the inmates met and tried to agree on who should be appointed to the position, but their talks failed and both sides filed documents with the three-judge court on March 12 suggesting candidates for the position.

The state recommended two candidates: Lui and Curtis J. Hill, a former San Benito County sheriff.

Attorneys for the inmates recommended the appointment of Wendy Still, a Roseville resident who is the chief adult probation officer for the city and county of San Francisco, or Starr Babcock, the former general counsel for the State Bar of California.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/09/6311041/judges-appoint-prison-population.html#storylink=cpy

Women Overlooked in California Prisoner Realignment Program

California is in the midst of reducing its state prison inmate population to no more than 137.5 percent of capacity, the first step to address what was deemed inhumane overcrowded conditions. Much of the overcrowding in state prisons has been due to offenders violating conditions of their parole and automatically being sent back to prison. One of the programs undertaken has been transferring parole supervision of low level, non-violent, non-sex offenders to county probation departments. While still more than 5,400 inmates away from the desired benchmark, the population has been reduced and overcrowding has been eased somewhat in many of the state’s prisons.

However, the efforts seem to be more of an accounting trick.

A little discussed loophole in the mandate concerns how the reduction occurs. The court order requires that the overcrowding has to be reduced overall, but there seems to be some leeway regarding the percentage as to individual facilities. So while some of the more notable facilities have seen a reduction, many are still well above the desired capacity.

The most overcrowded are women’s facilities.

At the beginning of the realignment in 2011, women overwhelmingly benefited from the realignment. In the first year, more than 5,200 female prisoners were released. The majority of these releases were first time, non serious offenders.

As a result, the three women’s prisons were quickly below the court ordered benchmark. One facility, Valley State Prison for Women, saw a 36 percent reduction in inmates in 2011. The California Department of Corrections decided to convert the facility to a men’s prison to reduce overcrowding elsewhere. The remaining inmates at Valley State Prison were then transferred to the state’s two remaining women’s prisons.

The two women’s facilities are now operating higher than the court mandated level, one of which is currently at 175 percent capacity.

Nearly two-thirds of female prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, such as drugs or property crimes. Under the realignment, they are put under county jurisdiction as parolees. This gives them access to diversion programs which provide alternatives to jail should they violate their probation. Furthermore, all newly convicted offenders of non-violent, non-sex crimes are also eligible to serve their sentences under county jurisdiction instead of state.

A program that has become popular with several counties is called split sentencing. Under this program, offenders serve a portion of their term in the jail, and the remainder under strict supervision of the probation department. Often this means serving the remainder of their term under house arrest with electronic monitoring. They are subject to regular and surprise inspections and searches, with any violations subject to a number of penalties, including returning to jail.

Not all counties are created equal, however.

Nearly 30 percent of the realignment prisoners released fell under the supervision of Los Angeles County. Only 5 percent of the inmates in LA County jails are involved in a split sentencing program, with officials claiming that they don’t have the resources for the time intensive program. This means that most offenders that would normally serve in prison are serving longer sentences in jails that are not equipped for extended stays.

State prisons and county jails differ due to their populations. Prisons facilities and services are built and designed to house offenders with longer sentences. Jails are temporary facilities, housing those recently arrested, on parole violations, or serving a sentence of a year or less. The influx of prisoners has lead to overcrowding at the jails, which have seen stretched resources, including having to house the overflow in makeshift dorms such as basements.

This has become especially hard on women.

The majority of incarcerated women have children. In jail, visitations must occur through a window, if they happen at all. There are no family rooms, or outside yards for exercising as there are in state prisons. Personal items, such as feminine hygiene products, aren’t easily available or in the same quantities. The standard issued sandals are the only option for footwear. Bad medical conditions and several inmates in a cell are also becoming more common.

The conditions are much like those that were occurring in state prisons, leading to the need for the prisoner realignment.

These issues also exist in the men’s jails, where many are seeing a marked increase in violence. There are plans for a new women’s jail in LA County, though it is still in the planning stages. The sheriff’s department is also looking to developing their jail diversion programs for both men and women.

In the meantime, the state prison population continues to decline because none of the prisoners in the county jail system count towards the state prison population, which makes them closer to meeting their reduction goal.

Crystal Shepeard

via: http://ow.ly/tWzXp 

Prison secretary seeks delay in inmate court order

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—California will have no choice but to move 4,000 more inmates to private prisons in other states if federal judges refuse to postpone a court-ordered population cap, state Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said Wednesday.

The state faces an April 18 deadline to reduce overcrowding in its 33 adult prisons. The judges have found reducing overcrowding to be the key step in improving inmate medical and mental health care, but Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking a three-year delay.

Brown's budget proposal, prematurely leaked Wednesday, assumes that the court grants a two-year extension to meet the cap. Like Beard, the budget says that if the extension is not granted the state will have to spend more money on short-term capacity increases while likely cutting spending on rehabilitation programs in order to avoid releasing inmates early.

Beard said such a delay would give the state time to build cells for nearly 3,500 additional inmates. That would bring the state close to meeting the federal population cap while avoiding the need to send more inmates elsewhere.

It also would give time for rehabilitation programs to work, he said. Those programs are designed to reduce the number of convicts who commit new crimes after their release and then get sent back to prison. Brown's budget projects $81 million would be available for rehabilitation programs in the fiscal year that begins July 1 if the two-year extension is granted, but the money will be eaten up by incarceration costs if it is denied, according to a copy of the budget posted online by The Sacramento Bee.

"We really don't want to do more out-of-state either, so we're hopeful we get our extension," Beard said in an interview. "But if we don't get that, then our only alternative will be to increase the out-of-state (transfers)."

A panel of three federal judges has set a Friday deadline for an end to negotiations between Brown's administration and attorneys representing inmates.

The judges already postponed by nearly 10 months their original June 30, 2013, deadline for the state to reduce its inmate population to about 110,000 inmates. Beard said that gave the state crucial time to begin operating what used to be a private prison in the Mojave Desert, open a medical hospital in Stockton and send additional inmates to five community correctional facilities within California.

Without those moves, the state would be looking at sending up to 7,000 inmates out of state instead of 4,000, he said.

California already houses roughly 8,900 inmates in Corrections Corporation of America prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. The Department of Finance estimates it costs the state $29,500 a year for each inmate housed out of state, although that amount is less than the average per-inmate cost within California because mostly younger and healthier prisoners are selected for the transfers.

The judges last year ordered the state not to move more inmates out of state, but Beard said he expects the judges would lift that ban when negotiations end this week.

An additional delay would give the state time to open an expansion of the Stockton medical facility this spring to house about 1,100 mentally ill inmates. The state last week also detailed plans to build three medium-security housing units over the next 2 1/2 years at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego and Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, 40 miles southeast of Sacramento, to hold a combined 2,376 inmates. The combined cost of all the new housing is $700 million.

Beard would not say if the budget Brown will propose Friday calls for building additional prison cells.

California already has reduced its prison population by about 25,000 inmates during the last two years, mainly through the governor's criminal justice realignment plan that is sending lower-level offenders to county jails instead of state prisons. 

Yet the inmate population keeps climbing, said Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office and one of the attorneys representing inmates in the long-running federal case.
"It's continuing to increase, so any building would be spending billions of dollars for only a temporary fix," he said. "It also shows that realignment was only a temporary fix, as well."

Brown and lawmakers of both political parties have been fighting previous court rulings that say the state can safely release more than 4,000 inmates by increasing good-behavior credits. The judges have previously said the state also could release elderly and medically incapacitated inmates without endangering the public.

"Other states and jurisdictions use lots of other methods other than increasing capacity, and there's no reason California can't do the same thing," Specter said.

The budget also includes nearly $65 million for the Department of State Hospitals to help the agency deal with a more violent mentally ill population that increasingly comes from the criminal justice system. A federal judge last year blamed the department for part of the problems in treating mentally ill prison inmates.



via: http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_24871805/prison-secretary-seeks-delay-inmate-court-order

RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Jail spending will eat up future money

Adding jail beds and boosting deputy patrols in Riverside County could eat up projected gains in revenue over the next few years, leaving little or nothing to restore code enforcement, animal control and other departments hit hard by the economic downturn.

Jail expansions could potentially max out the county’s self-imposed limit on debt payments by 2020, according to a recent analysis. Even then, the county likely can’t erase its jail bed shortage without going well beyond the limit.

The Board of Supervisors last month held a workshop on budget-related matters, including a five-year spending plan for jails and a plan to hire more deputies for unincorporated areas. The board voted to hire a consultant to further assess the jail crunch, and supervisors want a closer look at non-jail options, such as road crews and fire camps for low-level offenders.

After losing $215 million in tax revenue since 2007, county finances are starting to modestly perk up, and property tax revenue is expected to grow as the real estate market rebounds. But as more money comes in, the county faces massive new spending obligations, jails being the largest.

Jail crowding has been a problem for years. Since 2000, the county’s population grew 45 percent while the number of jail beds grew just 31 percent, according to a county staff report. A long-standing federal court order requires the county to release inmates early when there aren’t enough beds.

Under court pressure to shrink California’s prison population and relieve crowding, state lawmakers in 2011 passed public safety realignment, which shifted to counties the responsibility for inmates convicted of nonviolent, nonserious and non-high risk sexual offenses. Those offenders are now sent to jails instead of state prison.

The county’s five jails, which have 3,906 beds, filled up in January 2012. Almost 7,000 inmates got early releases in 2012, and the number is expected to exceed 9,000 by the end of this year. Roughly 18 percent of jail inmates – 693 – were there due to realignment as of Aug. 31, county staff said.

SKEWED PRIORITIES?

“Because of what the state has done, we will need to distort what would otherwise be our county priorities in order to do what must be done, which is to build jails to house people that used to be in prison,” county Chief Financial Officer Ed Corser told supervisors during the Sept. 23 workshop.

To curtail early releases, the county plans to add more than 1,200 beds to the 353-bed Indio jail by 2017. The $267 million project – a state grant covers $100 million – doesn’t include the cost of moving county offices to accommodate the expansion.

The county is applying for another $80 million in state funding to add as many as 582 beds to the 1,520-bed Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. Officials see potential there for a total of 1,600 additional beds.

Grants don’t cover the cost of running bigger jails. The new Indio jail, called the East County Detention Center, will require 406 sheriff’s personnel to be hired at a cost of $37.9 million annually by 2017, according to Corser’s figures.

In all, supervisors have committed to $97.5 million in new, annual public safety expenses by 2017, Corser’s numbers show. He expects revenue growth to cover the new costs.

But the $97.5 million doesn’t include higher labor costs that could come when the sheriffs’ union contract expires in 2016.

And it doesn’t address potential new funding requests from the district attorney’s office, the public defender, the Fire Department and probation. The county also is trying to boost its rainy day fund from $140 million, an amount described by one bond rating agency as “barely satisfactory,” Corser said.

Altogether, those additional requests could add up to $118 million by 2017, Corser said. Of that, $91.3 million would have to be found somewhere.

Prop. 172 passed in 1993 created a special public safety sales tax. But Corser said any growth in Prop. 172 revenue should go to the Indio expansion.

NOT ENOUGH

The Sheriff’s Department estimates the county needs 4,000 new jail beds now and 10,000 by 2028. Adding to Indio and Larry Smith would still leave the county short of that long-term goal.

Plans for a “hub jail” outside Palm Springs – 2,000 beds in phase one, 7,200 at buildout – have been discussed for years, and the county spent more than $22 million preparing for the project. But supervisors shelved the hub jail in 2011 amid cost concerns and opposition from Coachella Valley residents, who worried a jail seen from Interstate 10 would hurt the area’s image.

Even if supervisors revived the hub jail, a county staff analysis casts doubt on the ability to pay for it in the short term.

County policy dictates that no more than 7 percent of general fund spending go to paying off construction debt, a ratio meant to appease rating agencies that grade the county’s credit-worthiness. Adding 1,600 beds to Larry Smith brings the county to that threshold by 2020, the analysis shows.

The threshold would be shattered by 2025 if the county tries to add 10,000 beds now, according to the analysis. The Indio jail and other approved projects will double the county’s annual debt payments to $40 million by 2016, according to the analysis.

Deputy County Executive Officer Christopher Hans, who presented the analysis to supervisors, noted the projections are less accurate the farther they go out.

NOTHING BUT JAILS?

But assuming the numbers are true, there’s practically no room in the general fund – the county’s main piggy bank – for non-jail construction projects.

In the past, the county could use redevelopment money to pay for new infrastructure. But that option vanished in 2011 when the courts upheld the abolishment of California redevelopment agencies.

The Riverside County Transportation Commission, a multi-jurisdictional agency, does have its own funding for transportation infrastructure. It’s also possible to pay for construction through developer impact fees, state and federal money and other sources.

Right now, 20 percent of the county’s $590 million in discretionary general fund revenue goes to corrections. Jail spending would make up more than 40 percent if 1,600 beds are added to Larry Smith and more than 80 percent if a 6,000-bed jail is also built.

MORE DEPUTIES

The five supervisors committed in April to improving the ratio of deputies to residents in the county’s unincorporated areas, which aren’t part of cities. The ratio stood at 1.2 deputies per 1,000 residents before the recession and fell to 0.75 per 1,000 in 2012. It should rise to 1 per 1,000 by the end of 2013.

To reach 1.2 per 1,000, Corser said the sheriff would have to add 148 deputies by 2018 at an annual cost of $21.4 million. Actual costs could vary depending on how long it takes to screen and train new hires.

During the workshop, Supervisor John Tavaglione questioned whether the 1.2 ratio is feasible. During tough times in prior years, budgets for the animal control and code enforcement departments were slashed, and supervisors had to restore them, he said.

“Now we’ve obliterated those departments,” Tavaglione said. “And we’re going to have to rebuild them again.”

Public safety departments have seen their budgets cut 3 percent in recent years, but other departments took hits of at least 15 to 19 percent, Corser said. Factoring in non-county funding, code enforcement and animal control budgets since 2007 have dropped 33 and 18 percent, respectively.

In September 2007, supervisors beefed up code enforcement staffing in the unincorporated areas to 90 officers and supervising staff, up from 40 the year before. The number is 44 now.

Tavaglione stressed he supports the Sheriff’s Department and said he would love to see a 1.2 ratio.

However, “To think that we can just, for the next five years, focus every single dollar that we have on only the Sheriff’s Department and nothing else … that we’re not going to be able to provide the other services necessary in our communities to support, that go along with sheriff … it’s ridiculous,” he said.

Supervisor Marion Ashley said without a safe environment, the county won’t realize the economic growth it is expecting.

PRICE FOR SAFETY

Assistant District Attorney Jeff Van Wagenen said the district attorney’s office agrees jail beds are the top priority.

However, he said more prosecutors will be needed as more deputies arrest lawbreakers. Van Wagenen estimates the office is down 15 to 20 lawyers compared to four years ago. In recent years, the office has sought grants and outside funding to offset expenses, he added.

The county also is bracing for possible holes in this year’s budget. The Sheriff’s Department could have a $20 million shortfall and Riverside County Regional Medical Center is looking at a $50 million gap when the fiscal year ends next June, Corser said.

Assistant Sheriff Steve Thetford said his department appreciates the costs associated with expanding jails and hiring more deputies.

“There’s a price for public safety,” he said.

via http://www.pe.com/local-news/politics/jeff-horseman-headlines/20131012-riverside-county-jail-spending-will-eat-up-future-money.ece

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