California Corrections Spending Still High Despite Reforms

In recent years, California has made significant progress in reducing the number of people involved with the state correctional system. These declines resulted from criminal justice reforms adopted by state policymakers and the voters following a 2009 federal court order requiring California to reduce overcrowding in state prisons.

This Issue Brief examines changes in corrections spending from the 2007-08 fiscal year — when the numbers of incarcerated adults and parolees peaked — to 2015-16, which began this past July. While total corrections spending as a share of the state budget is down slightly since 2007-08, spending for adults under state jurisdiction — which comprises more than 80 percent of total corrections expenditures and includes security and operations as well as health care — remains stubbornly high.

Significantly — and permanently — reducing corrections spending will require the state to take additional steps. These could include further reforming California’s sentencing laws, particularly with an eye toward cutting the length of prison sentences. This would reduce the number of incarcerated adults, which would allow the state to close one or more prisons and could help to lower prison health care spending.

Read the Issue Brief. 

Via the California Budget & Policy Center, November 2015 report

http://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/corrections-spending-through-the-state-budget-since-2007-08-still-high-despite-recent-reforms/ 

Conservatives are still trouncing liberals on prison reform

States don’t get any bluer than California, so last November’s vote adopting Proposition 47 – reducing six felonies to misdemeanors – could easily be taken as evidence that liberals and Democrats are leading the nationwide de-incarceration movement..

And that stands to reason. In image, at least, conservatives carry the tough-on-crime banner while liberals favor lenience and prefer rehabilitation to incarceration. The Obama administration won federal sentencing reforms. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that in 2014 the federal inmate population dropped – the first net reduction since 1980. Liberal officials, liberal policies, right?

So the American Conservative’s Feb. 3 Q. and A. with Mark Earley, a Republican Virginia lawmaker and attorney general and now a criminal defense lawyer, was a useful reminder that much of the real thinking and action on criminal justice reform has come from the right. Interviewer Chase Madar nailed the essential dichotomy in conservative politics by noting that conservatives “tend to value order and authority but also limited government.” There’s an obvious tension there – but it’s nothing new. Conservatives who once lined up behind the law-and-order part of their creed have begun questioning what mass incarceration means to the concept of limited government.

"I saw that in the ’80s and ’90s, criminal-justice policies were driven more by what constituents wanted, what worked in the short term," Earley said in the American Conservative. "But if you do that long enough, then all your constituents wind up having family members in jail."

The Times has noted with approval the reform-minded approach from conservatives on prisons and criminal justice reform.

“Many of the progressive innovations in criminal justice are coming not from supposedly liberal states and officials, but from conservatives who are determined to focus on cost and outcomes while keeping justice in the forefront,” the Times wrote in a 2011 editorial, just after criminal justice realignment took effect in California.

“The group Right on Crime is setting the pace in states such as Texas. At the same time, leaders on the left, in California and elsewhere, have been conspicuously quiet about making realignment work.”

Three years later, a few elected Democrats – but only a few – felt comfortable endorsing Proposition 47. Meanwhile, the Times ran an op-ed co-authored by Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of the founders of Right on Crime, urging passage and pointing out reforms made in conservative states like Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi.

“If so many red states can see the importance of refocusing their criminal justice systems, California can do the same,” Gingrich wrote.

Relatively few of California’s elected Republicans have chosen the red state path of seeing criminal justice reform as central to their limited-government creed. For the most part, the law-and-order approach prevails among Republican lawmakers in this most liberal of states.

So one of the most important aspects of the sweeping approval of Prop. 47 at the polls on Nov. 4 may be the signal it sends to California lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike: Update your view of the electorate. This is not 1990 or 2000. It’s OK to do thoughtful criminal justice and prison reform. You won’t automatically be punished at the polls for saying “no” to a new prison or a new get-tough-on-crime measure. There are good reasons, rooted in conservative as well as liberal politics, to focus on restorative justice and rehabilitation rather than simply retribution.

The Case for Prison Reform

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

via Reason.com

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

A Conservative Case for Prison Reform

By RICHARD A. VIGUERIE

MANASSAS, Va. — CONSERVATIVES should recognize that the entire criminal justice system is another government spending program fraught with the issues that plague all government programs. Criminal justice should be subject to the same level of skepticism and scrutiny that we apply to any other government program.

But it’s not just the excessive and unwise spending that offends conservative values. Prisons, for example, are harmful to prisoners and their families. Reform is therefore also an issue of compassion. The current system often turns out prisoners who are more harmful to society than when they went in, so prison and re-entry reform are issues of public safety as well.

These three principles — public safety, compassion and controlled government spending — lie at the core of conservative philosophy. Politically speaking, conservatives will have more credibility than liberals in addressing prison reform.

The United States now has 5 percent of the world’s population, yet 25 percent of its prisoners. Nearly one in every 33 American adults is in some form of correctional control. When Ronald Reagan was president, the total correctional control rate — everyone in prison or jail or on probation or parole — was less than half that: 1 in every 77 adults.

The prison system now costs states more than $50 billion a year, up from about $9 billion in 1985. It’s the second-fastest growing area of state budgets, trailing only Medicaid. Conservatives should be leading the way by asking tough questions about the expansion in prison spending over the past three decades.

Increased spending has not improved effectiveness. More than 40 percent of ex-convicts return to prison within three years of release; in some states, recidivism rates are closer to 60 percent.

Too many offenders leave prisons unprepared to re-enter society. They don’t get and keep jobs. The solution lies not only inside prisons but also with more effective community supervision systems using new technologies, drug tests and counseling programs. We should also require ex-convicts to either hold a job or perform community service. This approach works to turn offenders from tax burdens into taxpayers who can pay restitution to their victims and are capable of contributing child support.

The good news is that a national conservative movement to reform our criminal justice system, including volunteer pastoral counseling for prisoners and encouraging frequent contacts with family members, has been growing.

This Right on Crime campaign supports constitutionally limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility and free enterprise. Conservatives known for being tough on crime should now be equally tough on failed, too-expensive criminal programs. They should demand more cost-effective approaches that enhance public safety and the well-being of all Americans.

Some prominent national Republican leaders who have joined this effort include Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, the National Rifle Association leader David Keene and the former attorney general Edwin Meese III.

Right on Crime exemplifies the big-picture conservative approach to this issue. It focuses on community-based programs rather than excessive mandatory minimum sentencing policies and prison expansion. Using free-market and Christian principles, conservatives have an opportunity to put their beliefs into practice as an alternative to government-knows-best programs that are failing prisoners and the society into which they are released.

These principles work. In the past several years, there has been a dramatic shift on crime and punishment policy across the country. It really started in Texas in 2007. The state said no to building eight more prisons and began to shift nonviolent offenders from state prison into alternatives, by strengthening probation and parole supervision and treatment. Texas was able to avert nearly $2 billion in projected corrections spending increases, and its crime rate is declining. At the same time, the state’s parole failures have dropped by 39 percent.

Since then more than a dozen states have made significant changes to their sentencing and corrections laws, including Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, New Hampshire and Ohio. Much of the focus has been on shortening or even eliminating prison time for the lowest-risk, nonviolent offenders and reinvesting the savings in more effective options.

With strong leadership from conservatives, South Dakota lawmakers passed a reform package in January that is expected to reduce costs by holding nonviolent offenders accountable through parole, probation, drug courts and other cost-effective programs.

By confronting this issue head on, conservatives are showing that our principles lead to practical solutions that make government less costly and more effective. We need to do more of that. Conservatives can show the way by impressing on more of our allies and political leaders that criminal justice reform is part of a conservative agenda.

Richard A. Viguerie is the chairman of ConservativeHQ.com and the author of “Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.”

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

RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Supervisors approve jail expansion plan

Riverside County supervisors have endorsed a strategy that could double the size of three existing jails and restart planning for a Palm Springs-area mega-jail.

The strategy offered by supervisors Marion Ashley and Jeff Stone is meant to give county staff a road map for how the Board of Supervisors wants jail expansions to proceed.

“We really need to go to the whip on the jails situation,” Ashley told his colleagues at a recent meeting. “It’s good for our economy to protect our people. It’s good for our safety and our quality of life.”

The strategy is short on specifics, including construction timetables and how the county will pay for the added jail space. And Sheriff Stan Sniff contends that some parts of the strategy may be unfeasible.

On June 4, the board passed the strategy 4-0. Supervisor John Tavaglione was absent while recovering from a biceps injury.

Jail capacity is one of the top challenges facing supervisors.

Besides needing to keep pace with population growth, the county’s 3,906-bed, five-jail system is under tremendous strain following the start of state public safety realignment, which shifted responsibility for low-level offenders from the state to counties. Under realignment, people convicted of nonviolent, nonserious and nonsexual crimes serve their sentences in county jail instead of state prison.

County jails filled up after realignment started in October 2011 and last year, the county released almost 7,000 prisoners early to comply with a federal court order to ease crowding. Even more early releases are expected this year.

The county jail system wasn’t designed to handle the medical, recreation and other needs of inmates serving multi-year sentences, and the county faces a class-action lawsuit alleging inadequate inmate health care.

The county already is taking steps to add jail beds. Planning is underway to add more than 1,200 beds to the 353-bed Indio jail at a cost of $237 million, $100 million of which is covered by a state grant. The expansion is expected to be open by 2017.

The Sheriff’s Department also is seeking an $80 million state grant to add as many as 380 beds to the 1,520-bed Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. Grant money also would pay for more room to run alternative sentencing programs.

And the county is sending jail inmates to fire camps and using electronic-monitoring ankle bracelets so defendants awaiting trial can stay at home instead of jail.

Still, expanding Indio and Banning won’t solve the jail-bed shortage, officials contend. The Sheriff’s Department has said the county will need 4,000 more beds by 2020 and 13,500 beds by 2050, according to Stone and Ashley.

By comparison, Los Angeles County currently has 23,600 jail beds. Los Angeles County has just under 10 million residents while Riverside County’s population is 2.2 million.

The supervisors’ strategy suggests goals for adding beds to Larry Smith, the Robert Presley Detention Center in downtown Riverside and the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley.

The strategy sees room for another 1,600 beds at Larry Smith, 1,500 to 3,000 beds at Southwest and 900 beds at Robert Presley. Combined with what’s coming to Indio, these potential expansions could add 5,250 to 6,750 beds.

Sniff said his department is happy to look at ways to add jail beds. But he said expanding Robert Presley and Southwest isn’t cost-effective.

“Unless there’s something new that’s changed on it, I’m really doubtful that those are panning out,” Sniff said.

A team led by Assistant County Executive Officer George Johnson will flesh out a plan to expand the jails using the supervisors’ strategy. The team, which could deliver a report to supervisors in three to six months, will include representatives from the sheriff’s office, probation and mental health departments.

The strategy also touches on the Mid-County Detention Center, once planned for a site off Interstate 10 in Whitewater east of Palm Springs. The county spent $22 million on studies and land acquisitions for the jail and the original plan called for the facility to have as many as 7,200 beds at full build-out.

The project faced opposition from Palm Springs-area residents who said its visible freeway location could hurt tourism. Supervisor John Benoit, who represents the county’s desert communities, led the push to shelve the project in 2011, saying the county couldn’t afford it.

The strategy doesn’t specify where the mid-county jail should go. Instead, it calls for planning to continue should state or federal funding become available one day.

New jails such as mid-county take years of planning, Ashley said. “We can’t just sit around and say ‘Oh, we have to go to work on Mid-County now,’” he said.

Sniff has said the county will eventually have to look at building a mid-county jail.

Follow Jeff Horseman on Twitter: @JeffHorseman

via PE.com

Editorial: Brown needs to convene prison settlement talks

Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature did a heavy lift in reducing California's 33 overcrowded state prisons from 141,000 inmates to 119,000 in two years. But the effects of Brown's public safety realignment have plateaued.

The state still has 9,000 inmates to go to meet the population cap affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 – reducing prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity (110,000) and sustaining that reduction.

Unfortunately, Brown has been bellicose in saying "no more" and he intends to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, again. Appeals may delay the reckoning, as before, but are highly unlikely to end federal oversight.

All this fighting is sidetracking everybody from the real task – which should be finding common ground around durable remedies to reduce prison population. A better course would be for Brown to bring Assembly and Senate leaders, law enforcement officials, the federal health receiver and special master, the corrections secretary and Prison Law Office attorneys in the same room and hammer this out.

Further prison reductions need not be onerous, unworkable or detrimental to the public interest.

For example, to his credit, Brown says he is open to expanding prison fire camps, which are well below the 4,500 capacity. Brown wants to add 1,250 inmates by Dec. 31. He should go further. Today, inmates with serious or violent offenses are barred from fire camps, even if they are rated low risk. The Legislative Analyst's Office last year recommended changing the eligibility criteria to consider risk, looking at all 30,000 low-security inmates. The state needs more fire crews than ever.

Brown has given short shrift to expanding geriatric parole to address the rapidly aging prison population that is driving prison health costs. Many of the 6,500 inmates who are 60 or older pose little threat to public safety but cost the state a lot in health expenses. Brown believes 250 of these inmates could be paroled by Dec. 31. Legislators should change the law to expand that.

Brown also is dismissive of expanding earned-time credits for inmates who successfully complete education, vocational training and treatment programs that reduce recidivism rates. California only allows up to six weeks a year, well below other states. Why not increase the length of good-time credits to the national average of four to six months?

In addition, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg has a proposal to address mental health and substance abuse issues that get people cycling in and out of jail and prison. And while Steinberg was early to jump on Brown's appeal bandwagon, he is open to expanding fire camps, parole for elderly inmates and earned-time credits.

The big missing piece is sentencing reform, creating a sentencing commission to create a framework for organizing the state's piecemeal sentencing laws. In states such as North Carolinaand Virginia, sentencing commissions have brought longer sentences for violent offenders, tougher community punishments, more consistency and an end to prison crowding. Steinberg is strongly supportive. Brown should champion this.

Prison reform advocates say they are open to negotiating the crowding issue, though they have won most of the important court orders. Brown should take heed of this. Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, says sitting in a room together would go a long way in overcoming the balkanization and distrust that has built up.

California should build on the progress of the last two years, not stop the prison overhaul. The governor needs to get everybody to the table now and craft durable remedies that would end federal oversight of California's prisons.

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/08/5402832/brown-needs-to-convene-prison.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/08/5402832/brown-needs-to-convene-prison.html#storylink=cpy

3 strikes reform brings hope to some inmates

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The passage of Proposition 36 this week signals a new cost-conscious view of crime and punishment. Revising the state's three strikes law means thousands of prison inmates could soon be back on the streets.

With the help of California Watch, part of the Center for Investigative Reporting, we hear from three inmates awaiting their freedom.

Tuesday night was a chance to celebrate for supporters of Prop 36, the initiative to scale back California's three strikes law.

"Usually when people go to the polls, they are voting to increase penalties; this is one of the few times actually in U.S. history where they've said, 'No, it's too harsh,'" Prop 36 author Michael Romano said.

No one was paying more attention to the vote than one group of prisoners at San Quentin Prison. Called Hope for Strikers, the group has been meeting for many years to bring awareness to the three strikes law.

"My name is Eddie Griffin and I got 27 years to life for possession of cocaine," inmate Eddie Griffin said.

"My third strike is burglary of an unoccupied dwelling; it was my first relapse after being clean and sober for almost 10 years," inmate Joey Mason said.

"My third strike was instigating a fight; it was a non-violent, non-serious felony, and they gave me 25 to life," inmate Sajad Sakoor said.

Sakoor has already served 16 years behind bars. He is one of the 9,000 third strikers in California's prisons, and one of the 3,000 who will be eligible for a rehearing because of Prop 36.

"This is my second time in prison and my first two strikes came from one case when I was 18 years old, two burglaries," Sakoor said.

Now, a judge could decide to remove Sakoor's life sentence.

"If the life sentence gets taken off, then chances are that I may end up going home because I have so much time already in," Sakoor said.

Sutter County District Attorney Carl Adams opposed Prop 36.

"California voted for three strikes because they were tired of this idea of people going to prison, getting out, committing another felony, victimizing somebody else, going back, getting out, creating another victim, and so on and so on," he said.

Romano says California's three strikes law will still remain the toughest in the country.
"It is really trying to address what we think are the most excessive sentences in the country, close to in the country's history," he said.

California is one of 27 states with a three strikes law. Before Prop 36, it was the only state to impose life sentences for non-violent third strikes.

Romano says this week's vote will help reduce some of the strain in California's penal system.

"It makes sure that our prisons are not overcrowded with people who don't deserve to be there and also helps people who have been sentenced to life for very minor, nonviolent conduct," he said.

Since the three strikes law passed in 1994, crime has dropped in California, but it has also dropped in states without three strikes. As state spending on prisons has skyrocketed, politicians across the country are questioning whether the benefits of laws like three strikes outweigh the costs.

"We need a safe country, I want to live in a safe neighborhood, everybody does, but we ought to take a look at this corrections system and say is this really the way to do it," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said. "Is there another way to do it, which could save us money and still keep us safe? I think there might be."

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Durbin is leading a broad review of us prison policies.

"I believe that voters want to make sure that those in government are spending their money well and not wasting it," he said. "I also think that they don't want America to be known as a country that does inhumane things to its prisoners and, and incarcerates them unfairly, for any lengthy period of time that can't be justified."

This week's vote signals a new direction for California, which was at the forefront of introducing laws like three strikes.

"All eyes are on California here; California started this trend, as it starts so many trends, and people are really looking to see what people in the state are going to do with the three strikes law," Adam Gelb, Director of Public Policy Safety Research at the Pew Center on the States, said.

Gelb says other states have also started to temper sentencing laws.

"Those states may be willing to revisit what they've done and maybe go a little further and the other half of the states that haven't approached this issue in a serious way yet probably are going to say, 'Maybe now it's time,'" he said.

Meanwhile, for thousands of California inmates like Sakoor, Prop 36 may now offer a chance at a fresh start.

"I'm glad that the people of California are having a second chance to take a second look at this; I'm hopeful, I'm very hopeful," Sakoor said.

via ABCNEWS

Gov. Jerry Brown Has a Chance to Usher in Major Prison Reforms in California

With a couple strokes of his pen, Gov. Jerry Brown can significantly alter the way California's prison system works.

Yesterday, the state Senate passed a bill that would give parole opportunities to juvenile offenders sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

This week, that body will likely also vote on a bill that would allow journalists to set up interviews with inmates in state prisons. The prison media access bill has passed through the state legislature eight times over the past couple of decades, and has been vetoed at the governor's desk each time.

Brown, who has paroled inmates at a much higher rate than his two predecessors, has yet to take a public stance on either of these bills.

The juvenile parole bill, proposed by Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, would allow juvenile offenders to appeal a life sentence after serving 15 years. If the inmate shows remorse and pursues rehabilitation, a court can grant him a parole hearing after his 25th year. Juveniles convicted of torture or killing a cop would not be eligible. There are currently around 300 lifers who could request a parole opportunity if the bill passes.
Yee, who has worked as a child psychologist, argues that because young people's brains are not yet fully developed, they should have the opportunity to prove they are fit for release.
Sen. Joel Anderson, a Republican from San Diego, disagreed that juvenile murderers have the potential to rehabilitate:
"This is absolutely outrageous that we are going to release these little psychopaths back onto the street to murder again," he said, according to the L.A. Times. "We're talking about serious crimes where we have young people who are flat-out evil."
The bill passed 21-16 -- the dissent coming from all 14 Republicans as well as two Democrats.
The prison media access legislation might be just as close. California's Department of Corrections opposes the bill, claiming that inmate interviews can "glamorize" criminals and bring back past trauma to victims. Reporters have been barred from scheduling in-person interviews with inmates since 1996. Instead, prison officials allow 15-minute telephone interviews with inmates who have phone access. Even when reporters gain access inside prisons, they can only speak to the inmates they randomly encounter on guided tours. To the Corrections Department, though, "the media already enjoys a wide range of access to prisons and inmates."
Which is just ridiculous.
As This American Life correspondent Nancy Mullane explained in a Sac Bee op-ed last week:

Let's say an inmate has filed a lawsuit against the state, been injured in a riot, has direct knowledge about criminal conduct or has been involved in a high-profile court case. Reporters can only hope that while they are being escorted by a prison public information officer, they will randomly run into the specific inmate they need for a story.

The bill, pushed by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would require that prisons, given advanced notice, allow reporters to interview specific inmates as long as it doesn't "pose an immediate and direct threat to the security of the institution or the physical safety of a member of the public." Journalists would be allowed to bring in cameras, notebooks, and recording equipment.
The prison guards union -- the California Correctional Peace Officers Association -- supports the bill. As do media organizations and civil rights groups. Opposition from the Corrections Department and victims-rights groups has kept previous governors from signing off on the legislation.
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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

Drug laws panel supports reducing possession crimes to misdemeanors

Most but not all members of a drug-law-reform panel convened Tuesday by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi supported reducing simple drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.

The panel, which included San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, was part of a Justice Summit held annually by the Public Defender's Office.

Gascon led off in supporting a change in California law, as is currently being proposed in SB 1506, sponsored by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

"For me, this has been a long journey," said Gascon, who is also a former police chief. But "I truly have felt, in my years of working in public policy, that the war on drugs has been a failure," he said.

Gascon said sending young people to prison for drug possession is equivalent to sending them to a "university of crime" and making them more likely to re-offend in the future.

A dissenting voice came from Martin Vranicar, the assistant chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Association.

Vranicar said some drug users may need the threat of a possible felony conviction and sentence to motivate them to go into treatment programs.

Vranicar noted that most counties currently have diversion programs, but some offenders don't make use of them.

"We've got these programs that allow offenders to escape from criminal sanctions, but people just don't take advantage of them," he told the audience in the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Main Library.

At present, California law requires that possession of certain drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, is a felony punishable by 16 months to three years in jail. Possession of some other drugs, such as concentrated cannabis, sometimes known as hashish, can be either a felony or a misdemeanor punishable by no more than a year in jail.

Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, however, is now only an infraction, punishable by a fine.

Leno's bill, as of Tuesday pending in the Senate, would change the drug possession crimes now classed as felonies to misdemeanors.

In a video message to the conference, Leno said felony convictions make it harder for reformed drug users to obtain the housing, education and jobs they need to turn their lives around.

"We really perpetuate a chronic underclass, which benefits none of us," under the current drug laws," Leno said.

The three other panelists -- San Francisco Probation Chief Wendy Still, Deputy Public Defender Tal Klement and Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelman - supported changing the law and also called for broader societal reforms.

"You have to look at the underlying problem, and not just lock people up," Still said.


Via: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/drug-laws-panel-supports-reducing-possession-crime/nPGy9/

California Prisons Face Maximum Security Shortage

http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/02/27/31402/california-prisons-face-shortage-masimum-security-/
Feb. 27, 2012 | By Julie Small | KPCC

Last year, California began complying with a federal court order to reduce its prison population by shifting thousands of low-level felons to county custody. It’s called “realignment” and although it helped bring down the number of inmates in prison, it won’t solve another problem: Where to put the thousands of serious and violent inmates.

The number of inmates in state prisons has already dropped by 16,000 since realignment took effect in October. Corrections officials project that the diversion of low-level felons to counties will reduce the state prison population by 40,000 inmates within a few years. But California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation can’t shift serious felons to the counties.

In a report out last week the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected that as realignment progresses, state prisons will have a surplus of 15,000 low security beds and a shortage of 13,000 high-security beds.

The non-partisan report suggest several ways to deal with the mismatch.

Analyst Drew Soderborg says, "One thing that we’re recommending is that they try to maximize their use of their existing space to house high security inmates."

Soderborg thinks CDCR should convert most of the reception centers used to temporarily house new inmates into the higher security housing the prison system needs.

Corrections is also in the process of converting Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla into a men’s prison. The LAO recommends that CDCR use the prison to house as many serious offenders as possible.

Soderborg also says, "We’re recommending that they identify if there’s any other facilities out there that they can use to house high security inmates."

Converting facilities from minimum to maximum security will require an investment in construction, equipment and additional staff.

Soderborg says the state could save money by shutting down some of its more expensive prisons: One example the LAO's report cites is the California Institution for Men in Chino. Its security level matches that of the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, but Deuel spends $10,000 less per inmate per year to house felons than Chino does.

Soderborg says CDCR could also consider shutting down remote prisons that are difficult and expensive to staff and transferring inmates to maximum-security prisons in other states. He says California could also keep some of its high security facilities "slightly overcrowded."

Occupy movement stages day of protests at US prisons

via: theguardian

Occupy demonstrators participated in a nationwide day of action to protest against the US prison system on Monday, with demonstrations carried out at over a dozen sites across the country, including prisons in California, Chicago, Denver and New York.

The call to protest was issued by activists with the Occupy Oakland movement and was co-ordinated to coincide with waves of prison hunger strikes that began at California's Pelican Bay prison in July. Demonstrators denounced the use of restrictive isolation units as infringement upon fundamental human rights. The hunger strikes followed a US supreme court ruling in May which stated that overcrowding in the California prison system had led to "needless suffering and death." The court ordered the state to reduce its overall prison population from 140,000 to 110,000, which still well-exceeds the state's maximum prison capacity.

Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer – the American hikers who were held for over a year by Iranian authorities – took part in demonstrations outside San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. Addressing the crowd, Shourd described the psychological impact of solitary confinement, saying her 14 and a half months without human contact drove her to beat the walls of her cell until her knuckles bled. Shourd noted that Nelson Mandella described the two weeks he spent in solitary confinement as the most dehumanising experience he had ever been through.

"In Iran the first thing they do is put you in solitary," Fattal added.

Bauer said "a prisoner's greatest fear is being forgotten." He described how hunger strikes became the hikers' own "greatest weapon" in pushing their captors to heed their demands. According to Bauer, however, the most influential force for changing their quality of life while being held in Iran was the result of pressure applied by those outside the prison. It was for that fact, Bauer argued, that "this movement, this Cccupy movement, needs to permeate the prisons."

Occupy supporters are calling for a fundamental change in the US prison system, which today houses one quarter of the planet's prisoners; more than 2.4 million people. As of 2005, roughly one quarter of those held in US prisons or jails had been convicted on a drug charge. Activists point out that in the past three decades the nation's prison population has increased by more than 500%, with minorities comprising 60% of those incarcerated. The number of women locked up between 1997 and 2007 increased by 832%.

Demonstrators are broadly calling for the abolition of inhumane prison conditions, and the elimination of policies such as capital punishment, life sentences without the possibility of parole and so-called "three strikes, you're out" laws.

Some demonstrators were also demanding changes in their own specific states. Activists in Columbus, Ohio, for example, highlighted the fact that their state is second only to Texas in rates of capital punishment and planned to deliver letters to several elected officials, including governor John Kasich.

Ben Turk, an activist with Red Bird Prison abolition, noted that rising prices in prison commissaries have also been an issue with many Ohio prisoners. According to Turk, prices at the commissaries where prisoners purchase food and other amenities have risen, while the amount of money prisoners are able to make have largely remained the same.

"We work with prisoners and ask them what their grievances are," Turk said. "A lot of them talk about how commissary prices have been continually rising for the last couple of decades, while state pay remains the same."

At least 20 prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary chose to fast for the day in solidarity with Monday's action.

In Washington DC, demonstrators protested new prisoner visitation policies that will include the installation teleconference TV screens in place of glass partition.

In New York City, Mercedes Smith, a Brooklyn mother, took the streets along with roughly 250 others who marched from the Lincoln Correctional Facility through Harlem. Smith said she and her 21 year-old son had both been personally impacted by the criminal justice system. Smith said her son had been stopped and searched by the police throughout his life and is now incarcerated.

Smith carried a sign that read "End the War On Drugs". She said that people who were addicted to drugs had a "sickness" that was "not a reason to put them in prison."

"This war is costing more money. All the money that they using to keep this war going on, they could open up more centers, more programmes to help people," Smith told the Guardian.