http://informant.kalwnews.org/2012/02/imprisoned-for-life-part-ii/
By Joaquin Palomino
A life sentence with the possibility of parole is one of the only
sentences in California designed to encourage the convicted to reform.
Lindsey Bolar, who served 23 years in prison before receiving parole,
believes “lifers make up your best population in prison.” After
serving between 20 and 25 years, Bolar says, “you know that the mad
stupid stuff doesn’t go anymore, then all of a sudden you are trying to
find a meaning for your life and you want to go home.”
The system seems to work. Only around one percent of lifers
return to prison after being released, and almost never for another
violent crime. Still, for the past three decades, it has been
nearly impossible to be paroled. The reasons have less to do with public
safety than politics. In the second segment of a three-part series, we
look at the political chutes and ladders of California’s parole
process. KALW’s Joaquin Palomino has the story.
Around one quarter of California prisoners are serving a life
sentence with the possibility of parole. Also known as lifers, they’re a
unique group of inmates. For starters, most have committed a horrendous
crime – typically murder, rape, or kidnapping. They also have one of
the only indeterminate sentences in California, meaning their term is
open-ended and they have to work for their freedom.
J.B. Wells is one such person. “The crime I was charged with is
murder in the second degree and it carries a maximum sentence of 15 to
life,” says Wells. In 1983, he was sentenced to life with the chance of
parole (“chance” being the key word). To be freed, he had to participate
in programs, build up a resume and kick a steady drug habit. In prison,
he became a published author. “I’ve been in famous plays, I played the
part of Lucky in Waiting for Godot, I played the part of John Brown in John Brown’s Body, and I just had a really, really fabulous prison experience.”
It’s pretty rare to hear an inmate say he’s had a “fabulous prison
experience.” Although most released lifers don’t use such animated terms
to describe prison, many do say it was positive. Much of this has to do
with their indeterminate sentence, a type of sentence that was once
much more common in this state.
For almost the entire 20th century, California had an indeterminate
sentencing system. Offenders would get very broad sentences, such as
five years to life in prison. A parole board would make the final
decision on whether or not an offender would be released. “[An]
independent, objective set of experts would look at someone, look at
their psychology and look at their behavior, look at the totality of the
situation and make a reasonable decision,” explains criminal justice
expert Barry Krisberg. Theoretically, those that were fit to reenter
society would be released, and those that posed a threat would stay in
prison. But there were flaws in the process.
In 1979, a number of factors led to the end of that system and the
implementation of determinate sentencing. The driving force was
fairness. Under an indeterminate sentencing system, one person might get
four years in prison for dealing drugs and another could get six months
for the same crime. Accusations of discrimination and favoritism are
inevitable.
Determinate sentencing prevents those accusations. “Under determinate
sentencing, for virtually every crime, there are three potential
sentences that the judge can choose from: a high sentence, a medium
sentence, and a low sentence,” says Krisberg. “Under determinate
sentencing, you walked out of the courtroom knowing exactly how much
time you were going to serve.”
The state needed to rewrite the penal code to reflect the sentencing
overhaul and it put the legislature in charge of deciding which crimes
carried which sentences. That decision came with an unintended
consequence. “Suddenly, in this very political environment, with
everybody watching, with the media there, you have elected officials who
don’t necessarily have training or background deciding [the scale] of
penalties,” says Krisberg. The shift sparked an era of tough-on-crime
politics in California.
“It almost became a bidding war. ‘I want to show that I am tougher
than you, so if you think a rapist should get ten years, I think he
should get 20 years.’ So there has been this natural escalation
upwards,” Krisberg explains.
Life with the chance of parole was one of the few sentences excluded
from the overhaul. It maintained its indeterminate status, but it wasn’t
excluded from the trend towards toughness.
For most of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, the chance of being
paroled on a life sentence was around one percent. Last year, it peaked
at 18 percent, the highest it’s been in 30 years. Again, the reason for
this has to do with politics.
“California was in the grips of a moral panic about crime,” explains
Krisberg. “Voters were concerned with it. People would get defeated for
office because of it. We would have statewide elections that were
strictly about criminal justice sentencing.”
At the onset of this panic, in 1988, a ballot measure had passed that
granted the governor power to overturn parole board decisions.
Governors have been taking advantage of that power ever since.
During the 12 years Pete Wilson and Grey Davis were in office, almost
no life prisoners were released. Schwarzenegger was more lenient, but
he still reversed about 70 percent of his parole boards decisions.
According to Krisberg, Governor Brown is allowing more inmates to be
paroled, but the system is still stuck.
J.B. Wells can attest to that. He was eligible for release in July of
1990, but each time he went in front of the parole board he was
rejected for the same reason. “They would cite the gravity of the
offense, the heinousness of the crime,” says Wells.
He was turned down ten times on those grounds. Then, in 2008, the
California Supreme Court changed the rules. The Justices decided that a
lifer’s original crime could not be the sole factor in a parole board’s
suitability hearing. “The courts eventually said you just can’t use that
over and over and over again,” Wells explains, “because that is
something the prisoner can’t change.”
In a 2010 parole hearing, Wells was found suitable for release – but
he still couldn’t get out right away. The tape recorder had
malfunctioned during the hearing and he was told that, without a
transcript, the parole hearing was null. Wells had to wait another year.
Last year, Wells was finally released, 21 years past his minimum
parole date, at the age of 68 years old. “I’m just so grateful to still
be alive, to have hair on my head and teeth in my mouth,” says Wells.
Having an indeterminate sentence, which aims to rehabilitate, in a
prison system guided by retribution creates some pretty noticeable
contradictions. Wells experienced the extremes of both. In his own
words, he had a “fabulous prison experience,” accessing a number of
rehabilitative services and enrolling in a multitude of arts programs.
He was also an active member in a San Quentin Vietnam War veterans
group. But he also spent 21 extra years in prison despite never being
considered a risk to society by the parole board.
“At the end of the day, corrections was about the bumping of heads of
those people that think prison should be for punishment and those
people that think that prison should be for rehabilitation,” Wells says.
“And I was caught between that every day.”
It’s clear which side is winning this tug of war. In past 30 years,
California criminal justice has been guided almost exclusively by goals
of retribution, which many believe is the root of our current prison
crisis.
There are signs, though, that times could be changing. In 2006,
Governor Schwarzenegger put a key word back into the title of the state
department responsible for prisons, the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation. More recently, the
implementation of prison realignment has started bringing more
discretion to the sentencing process. Some lawmakers are even wondering
if a return to indeterminate sentencing might be in order.
