California Funds New Prisons Despite Prop 47 Passage to Reduce Inmates

California officials voted on Thursday to divert US$500 million to open new jails, replacing jail beds with medical and mental health beds. Criminal justice and civil rights activists protested the decision, which counters the purpose of the popular Proposition 47, passed last year to re-classify low-level felonies to misdemeanors and redirect funds to reduce recidivism.

“Californians didn't vote for Prop 47 so that we could reduce prison populations just to begin building new jails,” said Kim Carter, executive director of Time for Change Foundation, in a press release from Californians United for a Responsible Budget. According to Carter, the Board of State and Community Corrections, responsible for the vote, “should take the money they want to spend on jails and build some affordable housing,” she said, adding that “Reducing recidivism and increasing public safety means people need access to housing and jobs, not jail beds."

Prop. 47 aims to reduce prison populations in a state with severe overcrowding, designating extra funds to programs like "school truancy and dropout prevention, victim services, mental health and drug abuse treatment." At the same meeting, the BSCC began forming a committee to decide the distribution of Prop. 47 funds. Activists against jail expansion submitted their 14 candidates, all formerly incarcerated experts on substance use treatments, reentry programming, housing and mental health treatment. Currently the BSCC is largely made up of opponents of Prop. 47.

Though the BSCC announced that it would fund the new jail projects with funds from another bill, its administrative powers were expanded last month by Governor Jerry Brown. Proponents of Prop. 47 worry that it would look to using their own funds, and community members of the cities in question, spread across 15 countries, fear less funds for local social services.

Other states that passed similar laws have seen crime rates decrease, but a year into passing Prop. 47, crime rates vary across the state, according to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday. While some law enforcement authorities proposed innovative diversion programs, others escalated arrests to account for a perceived rise in petty crime. The report accounted for the differences in the priorities of officers and their departments.

The effects of Prop. 47 are too early to measure, but it is estimated to lower prison costs by US$150 million this fiscal year. The BSCC measure would eliminate 310 jail beds, but it would add 196 new ones, which some worry would not fulfill their definition of mental health treatment. This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:

Via TeleSur http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/California-Funds-New-Prisons-Despite-Law-to-Reduce-Prison-Population-20151112-0039.html

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.

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

Declaring an impasse, judges to order solution on prisons

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown and lawyers for state prison inmates have failed to agree on a plan to handle crowding in the state's prisons, and the judges who ordered the two sides into talks said they would now order a solution themselves.

The judges gave Brown and the prisoners' attorneys until Jan. 23 to file proposals for achieving "durable compliance" with population limits that are scheduled to go into effect April 18.


The federal jurists — U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson in San Francisco and Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento, and 9th Circuit Appellate Judge Stephen Reinhardt in Los Angeles — had set last Friday as a deadline for a negotiated solution to overcrowding that they say endangers inmates' health and safety.

But after three months of talks, "it now appears that no such agreement will be reached," the judges said in an order released Monday.

The jurists said they would make their decision within a month, possibly extending the April deadline.

Brown said Tuesday that any deal permitting the early release of offenders would have been untenable.

"We've talked a lot to the prison lawyers, and I understand their job is to get people out of prison, regardless of what the law may say," he told reporters in Bakersfield, where he stopped during a brief state tour to discuss policy issues. "My job is to protect public safety."

The governor said he would handle any order to further lower inmate numbers by moving more prisoners to privately owned lockups and county facilities.

"We're prepared to respond, and certainly over the next couple years to purchase more prison capacity," Brown said.

Brown had asked the judges to delay the population caps by three years. The state budget he proposed last week assumes at least a two-year delay.

The judges' latest order means a short delay before Brown and state lawmakers learn whether they will need to increase spending to send more prisoners to alternate facilities.

If the judges push the April deadline back to 2016, as Brown seeks, the governor proposes in his budget to direct $81 million in savings to prisoner rehabilitation programs.

Meanwhile, as the governor revealed in his budget plan, he is immediately extending eligibility for parole to more frail and elderly inmates, as well as expanding the number of some repeat offenders eligible for early release.

Those steps would make about 2,200 inmates newly eligible to be removed from the prisons, but state officials have told the court they expect only about 440 to be freed in the first six months of such changes.

California's prison population has dropped by more than 27,000 since Brown took office. But state reports show it has been growing since June and will continue to expand in the coming years.


"We are hopeful the court will recognize that the state has made significant reforms to our criminal justice system and will allow us an extension so we can build upon these landmark reforms," corrections spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said.

via: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-prisons-20140115,0,1442683.story#axzz2qVgzIeX5

PUBLIC SAFETY: Inland counties denied millions for jail construction

Riverside and San Bernardino counties each were denied requests this month for $80 million in state grants for jail construction, even though their applications ranked among the highest-scoring based on criteria used to evaluate grant proposals.

The denial hampers efforts to add and improve jail space in this region. In order to comply with federal court orders, each county has released thousands of inmates early since 2011 because there’s no room for them.

Riverside’s 3,906 jail beds in five jails are all filled. And the chronic lack of beds was exacerbated in 2011 with the enactment of public safety realignment. Under realignment, offenders convicted of low-level offenses serve their time in county jails instead of state prisons, a move made to satisfy a court mandate to reduce California’s prison population.

Almost 7,000 Riverside inmates were turned loose early in 2012 to relieve crowding. More than 9,000 have been let go so far this year.

Early release could cause a rise in low-level crimes, such as petty theft and drug possession, said Riverside County Assistant Sheriff Steve Thetford.

“There’s no deterrent effect when you can’t keep people in custody,” he said. “It’s not healthy for public safety.”

San Bernardino’s four jails hold about 6,000 inmates. Since January 2012, more than 6,900 inmates have been released early. An expansion of the Adelanto jail will add another 1,392 beds.

Both counties competed for a slice of $500 million set aside by the state Legislature for jail construction with an emphasis on programs intended to stop inmates from re-offending. In all, Sacramento received $1.3 billion in requests from 36 counties.

Riverside wanted the money to add 582 beds to the 1,520-bed Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. Grant dollars also would have paid for more space for vocational, substance abuse and education programs already taking place at Larry Smith.

San Bernardino wanted $80 million to reconfigure and add buildings to the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center, said Cindy Bachman, a sheriff’s spokeswoman. Money also would have gone to improving a road to the jail that is subject to flooding, she said.

A state steering committee graded each request. Among large counties, San Bernardino scored the highest and Riverside ranked third. However, the recommended grant awards went to Orange, San Mateo, Fresno and Sacramento counties.

Robert Oates, a project manager with the state corrections board, said Riverside and San Bernardino did not do enough to show that their respective county supervisors were committed to funding the jail projects that were the focus of their grant requests. Preference goes to shovel-ready projects, he said.

Riverside County officials disagree. In an email, spokesman Ray Smith said the county plans to appeal the grant decision. He contends that the county demonstrated its commitment by expanding the Indio jail and building a new secure youth treatment facility.

A $100 million state grant is paying for the estimated $267 million cost of adding more than 1,200 beds to the 353-bed Indio jail, which will be known as the East County Detention Center. The expansion is supposed to be ready by 2017, but Riverside officials earlier this year were worried that delays in getting state approvals might push back the timeline.

Smith and Thetford said the county will try to find other funding to expand the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility.

Besides seeking funds elsewhere, Riverside also is considering non-jail alternatives for offenders. These include sending more inmates to state-run fire camps and increased use of electronic monitoring.

Adding onto Smith remains a priority, Thetford said.

“It’s a competitive process. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t,” he said. “We’re just going to keep plugging away at it.”

Staff Writer Brian Rokos contributed to this story.

Follow Jeff Horseman on Twitter: @JeffHorseman

Grants rejected

Riverside and San Bernardino counties each were turned down for $80 million in state grants for jail construction.

What’s at stake? The denial hampers efforts to add and improve jail space in this region.

What it means: Lower-level criminals will continue to be released early.

Why does that matter? Early release could cause a rise in low-level crimes, such as petty theft and drug possession.

What’s next? Officials from both counties say they’ll seek funding elsewhere.

via: http://www.pe.com/local-news/politics/politics-headlines-index/20131224-public-safety-inland-counties-denied-millions-for-jail-construction.ece

Yoga Could Boost Prisoners' Mental Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In California, Taxpayers “Pay More But Get Less”

By Carl DeMaio

Former San Diego City Councilman

Monday, July 15th, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can we realistically do this?

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

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

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

Why California won't build prisons to ease inmate overcrowding

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

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

By David Siders — dsiders@sacbee.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brown: Progress ignored

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brown called 'a cheapskate'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Via FresnoBee

It's a crime to house the mentally ill this way

July 17, 2013, 5:00 a.m.

If you routinely hear voices, hallucinate, sink into suicidal depression or suffer inescapable torment, Los Angeles has a place for you.

The county jail.

On Monday, the jail held 3,200 inmates diagnosed with a mental illness and accused of a crime. Most have not been to trial, many have waited months for their day in court, and the majority have cycled through at least once before. There's no longer enough room to house them all in segregated areas, so 1,000 mentally ill men and 300 women are housed with the general population.

Sheriff Lee Baca has said for decades that he runs the nation's largest mental hospital, but we've heard it so often that the shock has worn off. We know there's something inexcusably wrong with the system — something backward and inhumane. But we shrug and move on, and the failure of public policy persists, at great public expense, while Los Angeles County officials order up another round of studies.

On the seventh floor of the Twin Towers, some of the most severely ill men stood in the locked single cells of a dorm-style bloc Monday, staring into space, banging on walls or howling. On the fifth floor, cells were filled to capacity and bunks were squeezed into the common dining area to handle the overflow. Some of the bunks are two beds high, some three. Privacy and quiet do not exist for inmates or their jailhouse therapists.

If you're trying to figure out what makes for a desirable therapeutic environment, said Sara Hough, who runs the jail clinical program for the county Mental Health Department and takes pride in trying to deliver desperately needed care, "this ain't it."

County sheriff's Sgt. Julie Geary pointed out an inmate who thinks that he's Abraham Lincoln and that he's possessed by a spirit. Nearby was a man who's been in and out of jail so many times, Geary is on a first-name basis with him. "You're back," she recalled telling Herman. And she knows which inmates can be expected to complain that poisonous gas is being piped into their cells.

On the fifth floor, a 49-year-old inmate squatted and spoke to me through a small opening in a locked door. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia as a young man, he said. I asked how many different times he's been in jail since then.
"About 15," he guessed.

And the total amount of time he's been locked up?

"Sir, to be honest with you, about 27 years."

While I spoke to him, another middle-aged man kept gesturing through a window that he wanted to talk, too.

"Sir," he said, "I'm just trying to get into a drug program."

He rattled off a list of diagnoses he's received, including bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. Like the 15-timer, he's been in jail so many times he could only guess at the number.

"About 10," he said.

Clearly, locking these men up over and over again isn't working, and it isn't cheap. But it's what the system has been doing for years in Los Angeles County and in jails and prisons across the country.

Therapists know it. Judges know it, because they see the same offenders churn through their courtrooms, many of them for drug possession and minor offenses in which the underlying cause is often a mental illness. And jailers surely know it, though the problem is not of their making or of any other single agency's.

"We're on the same page here," sheriff's Cmdr. David Fender said Monday when I met with him and mental health officials at the jail. "The entire leadership" of the Sheriff's Department "believes we've got to do something about this."

No doubt, so what's the plan?

The county Board of Supervisors is pushing ahead, after years of delay, with plans to update jail facilities in hopes of fending off possible federal intervention following myriad reports of inmate abuse and deplorable conditions. Earlier this year, the supes hired a consultant to make proposals for demolishing the dungeon-like Men's Central Jail, building a new facility in its place and updating other detention centers. At Tuesday's board meeting, five proposals were aired, including construction of a jail devoted entirely to inmates with medical and mental health problems.

But would that be a new direction, or the same failed strategy in a new and improved building? Even when inmates get counseling and meds in jail, the majority of them leave with no long-term recovery plan or supervision on the outside, so guess where they end up.
The costs of the proposals ranged from $1.32 billion to $1.62 billion, and no doubt some upgrades are needed. But several dozen demonstrators at the meeting called for no new jails, and many of them stepped to the mike to demand a greater investment in steering people out of detention.

One of the speakers, Marsha Temple, cited an earlier study recommending community treatment centers rather than incarceration for many of those with mental health problems. She points out that permanent supportive housing and treatment would offer a far better chance at recovery, and would cost a fraction of what it takes to throw someone into a jail cell.

"Why are we locking up people who are mentally ill?" Temple asked me rhetorically Tuesday afternoon, her tone suggesting the practice is nothing short of barbaric. And she said declining birth rates and crime rates make her fear that more jail space will lead to more warehousing of those who ought to be in treatment rather than in jail.

Temple runs the L.A. nonprofit Integrated Recovery Network, which contacts inmates before their release, then follows them back out with supportive services like housing assistance, job training and mental health counseling. But her group can handle only a fraction of the need. Temple has been strategizing with judges, attorneys and treatment providers to push for similar services at the time of arraignment, with the goal of avoiding incarceration altogether, particularly for nonviolent offenders.

That's already being done on a small scale, with the county's Homeless Alternative to Living on the Streets program. But 3,200 people with a mental illness are behind bars (17% of the jail population).

That's shameful, and once you've looked into their eyes, you're haunted by the conviction that many of them are serving time for the crime of being afflicted. If the supervisors have trouble finding the will to do right by such a vulnerable, stigmatized population, maybe they should take one more tour of the nation's largest mental hospital.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

No More Cages Petition

In addition to fighting prison and jail construction in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area, Critical Resistance is launching a statewide petition calling for an immediate halt to all prison and jail expansion projects across California.

JOIN US TO DEMAND: NO MORE CAGES IN CALIFORNIA!

Prisons and jails have devastating impacts on our communities. People who have lived through prison and jail time often come back to their communities less able to secure the basic life necessities. Imprisonment harms people's physical and mental health and formerly imprisoned people often lose their jobs, homes, and children.  Inside jails and prisons, people face medical neglect, constant harassment, and physical and sexual violence. The racist violence of imprisonment takes away vital economic and emotional support from mostly poor communities of color.

Our goals are to:

• Eliminate statewide funding sources for prisons and county jails.
• Persuade cities, counties and the State to adopt a resolution to halt all current and future construction of jails and prisons.
• Educate people about how inhumane and costly imprisonment is.
• Build relationships with allies also working to reduce imprisonment and abolish jails and prisons.

We demand that decision-makers across the State of California take the following steps:

• Immediately end any and all planning, construction, and/or expansion of prisons and jails across the state. Cancel all lease revenue bonds sales to investors who would profit from prison and jail construction. Stop creating tens of billions of dollars in debt for future generations.
• Invest in projects that improve the health and well-being of our communities and increase public safety. We need schools, job training centers, youth centers, rehabilitation facilities, housing, not more jails and prisons.
• Implement well-known strategies to reduce rates of imprisonment, and create innovative programs that support the real needs of people coming home from prison and jail. Current policies have resulted in the prison population growing from 20,000 in 1980 to over 170,000 in 2007. Repeal repressive sentencing laws and policing policies that have targeted and destabilized communities of color.

 SIGN THE PETITION NOW!

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War on drugs: The 'wobbler' option

The state should change its policy to allow possession of small amounts of addictive drugs to be charged as felonies or misdemeanors.

Simple possession of small amounts of methamphetamine — enough for personal use but presumably not for dealing — is a "wobbler" in California, meaning that offenses can be charged as either felonies or misdemeanors. It's different with possession of cocaine, opiates such as heroin and many other addictive drugs; they currently can be charged only as felonies.

The state Senate has now passed a bill to bring criminal handling of those drugs into line with methamphetamine, and the measure is before the Assembly. SB 649, by Democrat Mark Leno of San Francisco, is good policy and should be adopted.

The bill is an improvement over a version Leno offered last year to convert possession to a misdemeanor, with no felony option.

True, there is something perverse about locking people up for any period for possessing highly addictive drugs for their own use. Most offenders have the stuff on hand because they are hooked. For years California sent such addicts to prison, where little or no treatment was available. They were released on parole, which they were practically fated to violate by using drugs again — because they were, after all, addicted.

This foolhardy approach gave California a steady supply of unrecovered addicts shuttling between prison and the streets. That meant continuing damage to neighborhoods dealing with the addicted, plus overcrowded prisons. At the end of last year, for example, there were more than 4,000 inmates in state prison for possessing drugs for personal use.

It would be better to divert addicts from the criminal justice system entirely if they could be successfully treated without ever going to jail or even to court. But for many addicts, there remains a role for punishment, or at least the threat of punishment. Addiction may be a disease, but the afflicted include families, neighborhoods and, ultimately, all of society, and they all have a stake in successful rehab. When the carrot of a clean life is insufficient to keep an addict in recovery, the stick — the prospect of a criminal sentence — remains there for backup.

Some argue that these drugs ought to be decriminalized altogether, as California has done with marijuana. Simple possession of cannabis for personal use is now not even a misdemeanor here but a traffic-ticket-like infraction, punishable by a fine.

The key distinction, though, is the addictive nature of cocaine, heroin and the other drugs covered by current felony laws. Addiction affects the user's behavior — and thus imposes its damage on society and not just on the user — well past the period of intoxication. There is room for a conversation about whether decriminalization is nevertheless a more rational approach for addictive drugs, but it's not the conversation, or the bill, at hand. Either SB 649 is a smart reform, or it's a good first step in a more far-reaching sentencing revamp. Either way, it's better than the status quo.

Opponents of the bill offer a number of arguments against the measure, but they fall flat. Reducing the penalties doesn't make a drug any less dangerous or addictive, they say. True enough, but so what? The existing law doesn't keep users from getting hooked in the first place. There is little point in locking up addicts for as long as three years if it's not part of a larger program to get them clean.

Misdemeanor convictions mean a year in county jail instead of up to three years in state prison, prosecutors argue, and jails are already filled to capacity. But this argument practically answers itself. Prisons too are filled well past capacity and have been under orders from a panel of federal judges to reduce their inmate populations.

And the point is moot anyway for people convicted of simple possession since October 2011, when the public-safety realignment program went into effect. They already are spending their 18 months (and up to three years) in county jail, not state prison. That's not some unforeseen and unfortunate consequence of realignment but is instead the essence of the program's design: Counties have the opportunity and now the incentive to offer treatment and alternative monitoring, and inmates and outpatients alike are treated closer to the neighborhoods to which they will (one way or another) soon return. They can begin the process right away of reconnecting with family and other positive influences in their lives, but they do so while they are still being supervised, so that the negative influences of their old neighborhoods can be monitored and mitigated. Offenders housed and treated closer to home show greater continuing success than those isolated in prisons hundreds of miles from home.

What if prosecutors and judges see a pattern of resistance and antisocial behavior in the addict? What if there is evidence, although not a record, of earlier crimes? That's one of the smart parts of this bill — the felony option is still available.

Moving from a straight felony to a wobbler is not without its hazards. The change would grant additional discretion to prosecutors and judges, and where there is discretion, there can be discrimination — by race, by class, by geography. Will African American defendants be more likely to be tried on felony charges than whites? Will district attorneys in one county file only misdemeanors and in another only felonies?

If the last three decades of criminal justice policy have taught California anything, it's that there can be no autopilot when it comes to sentencing. There must be constant vigilance — and in the modern era, that means arrest and sentencing data must be collected and available for public scrutiny. It should fall to the state attorney general to pick through those numbers, see to it that wobbler charges are not unfairly targeting any particular group and flag problems when laws need to be adjusted to ensure equal justice.

Via latimes.com