California public safety overhauls show promise, but problems remain

A contentious program that shifted control of some state prisoners to local governments dramatically reduced the prison population in California, but the decrease was not enough to meet a federal court order, according to a report released Monday.

It was only after statewide voters last fall approved reduced penalties for certain drug and property crimes that the prison population fell below the mandated target, said the new analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California. It has remained there since January, more than a year ahead of schedule.

Public safety realignment, launched four years ago, was considered one of Gov. Jerry Brown’s largest political and policy hurdles since he returned to the Governor’s Office in 2011. Brown, responding to the prison reduction order, argued that local authorities were better positioned to deal with alleviating the overcrowding crisis. But his critics, including law-and-order Republicans and some in law enforcement, asserted the changes would lead to a spike in crime.

PPIC makes no wholesale claims about the efficacy of the program. However, it provides a snapshot of its early effects as new reforms continue to take hold, including November’s successful Proposition 47 that changed most nonviolent property and drug crimes to misdemeanors from felonies.

“Realignment has largely been successful, but the state and county correctional systems face significant challenges,” wrote Magnus Lofstrom and Brandon Martin, the authors of the study. “The state needs to regain control of prison medical care, which is now in the hands of a federal receiver. And the state and counties together must make progress in reducing stubbornly high recidivism rates.”

The report found no dramatic change in recidivism rates. There also was no evidence that realignment has increased violent crime in California.

The lone area where crime increased was in auto thefts. Researchers estimate that the overhaul led to car thefts increasing by more than 70 per 100,000 residents. The car theft rate is about 17 percent higher than it would have been without realignment, the report states.

Although the realignment shift drove county jail populations close to historical highs, the program also has changed the profile of those incarcerated. The report found that by early 2014, some 1,761 inmates were serving sentences of more than five years, up from 1,155 in 2013.

Still, while county jail populations increased since 2011, the growth was far smaller than the prison population drop.

Researchers suggest various alternative crime-prevention strategies such as boosting policing, behavioral therapy and targeted intervention for high-risk youths.

Via: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article36881103.html 

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AM Alert: Should California reduce penalties for nonviolent crimes?

In November, voters will be asked to weigh in on Proposition 47, which would reduce some petty crimes – such as shoplifting less than $950 worth of merchandise and possession of cocaine or heroin – from felonies to misdemeanors.

The goal of the initiative is to cut the state prison population, saving potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that would otherwise be spent incarcerating criminals. An estimated 40,000 offenders would be affected by Proposition 47 annually, instead serving time in county jails or facing no significant time behind bars. The savings would be used for truancy and dropout prevention programs, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and victim services.

Law enforcement groups oppose the measure, arguing it could hurt public safety, but have raised little for their effort. Meanwhile, big money is pouring into the yes campaign, including six-figure contributions from Public Storage executive B. Wayne Hughes, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, and Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame.

The state Senate and Assembly public safety committees will hold a joint informational hearing on Proposition 47, starting at noon in Room 4203 of the Capitol. After an overview from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, supporters including San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, and opponents such as Harriet Salarno, chair of Crime Victims United, will provide testimony on the measure.

via: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/10/02/6753371/am-alert-should-california-reduce.html

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Analyst says Jerry Brown's prison plan is short-term fix

Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to reduce prison overcrowding may satisfy a looming federal deadline but it does not represent a durable long-term solution, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

In a victory for the Brown administration, the federal panel adjudicating the struggle over California's prison overcrowding recently gave the state two more years to reduce its population to constitutional levels.

While the LAO concludes that California is on pace to slip under the federal cap, the nonpartisan analyst faulted Brown's plan for relying too much on the use of county jails and private prisons. Brown's budget would spend $481 million to place just under 17,000 inmates in so-called contract beds .

A strategy combining contract beds with other changes, such as increasing good time credits and expanding parole for the elderly, inmates with serious medical conditions and second-strikers, will likely get California under a federally-mandated cap by the new 2016 deadline, the LAO found.

But the state's prison population is projected to climb again in subsequent years. Relying on contract beds will also place a costly burden on the state, the LAO argues, to the tune of about $500 million annually.

"The plan contains relatively few measures that would help the state maintain long-term compliance other than relying indefinitely on costly contract beds," the report concludes.

Given those risks, the LAO urged the Legislature to craft some longer-term policy solutions. 

Its recommendations include reducing certain sentences and converting some crimes to "wobblers" that can be charged either as misdemeanors or felonies -- an approach Brown vetoed last year - allowing inmates to earn more early release credits for good behavior, and expanding programs that allow adult men to serve part of their sentences outside of state prison.

The two-year extension, granted earlier this month, came after the governor secured legislative approval last year of his package allocating $315 million to house excess inmates.

But because California received the two-year extension, Brown's budget proposes taking some of the money approved last year to house more inmates and depositing it instead into a Recidivism Reduction Fund.

Specifically, Brown's budget also proposes channeling just under $50 million from the recidivism fund into re-entry hubs and around $30 million on substance abuse, rehabilitation and mental illness programs.

That infusion might help for the coming budget year, but it will quickly exhaust the recidivism fund, the LAO said. To sustain the types of programs Brown proposes funding, the Legislature would need to continue dipping into the General Fund on an annual basis.

"The Governor's budget proposals create or expand programs that would require ongoing funding to effectively reduce the prison population," the LAO report estimates.

The LAO also rejected both the governor's plan to fund re-entry hubs, which use education and treatment to prepare inmates nearing the end of their terms to reintegrate into society. 

The report cast doubt on whether re-entry hubs effectively reduce recidivism.
Similarly, the report urged the governor to discard his plan to spend $11.3 million on integrated drug treatment, calling the program unproven and overly costly.

Instead, the LAO recommends diverting the $60 million set aside for those two programs towards an initiative rewarding counties that keep paroled felons from returning to state prisons.


PHOTO: Inmates inside the jail cells in the old Stanislaus County downtown main jail in Modesto on Wednesday June 19, 2013.The Sacramento Bee/Manny Crisostomo.

Gov. Jerry Brown wins two more years to reduce prison crowding

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday won two more years to reduce prison crowding, a significant victory in his protracted battle with federal judges over inmate numbers.

The judges gave the governor until the end of February 2016 to ease crowding to levels they consider safe and imposed a schedule for doing so. In return, the administration must immediately make more inmates — mostly the elderly and ill — eligible for parole.

Monday's ruling averts a potentially explosive showdown between Brown and the judges before the governor officially launches his expected reelection campaign. It also reduces the chances that Brown will be forced to release inmates early — although if the state misses any of the court's new deadlines, a yet-to-be-named official will have the power to set prisoners free.

"It is obviously very good news for the governor," said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. The prospect of public backlash over mass prison releases, even those ordered by a court, "did have potential for creating problems for what is largely a smooth reelection campaign."

The judges' first benchmark is June 30, by which time the state must shed 1,000 inmates from its lockups, despite an increase in the rate at which they are arriving.

California now has 117,600 prisoners in prisons built for 81,600, and just over 12,200 more are housed in contract beds scattered across four states. The administration's most recent projections show that without changes, California will add about 10,000 inmates in the next four years.

In agreeing to Brown's request for a delay, the panel of three judges — who last spring excoriated the governor for defying their orders — cite his proposal to end the legal tussle and to "consider the establishment of a commission to recommend reforms of state penal and sentencing laws."

The governor has not announced a concrete plan for the formation of such a panel.

cj

Lawyers for inmates say a constitutional crisis has been avoided now that the judges won't have to carry out their threat to hold Brown in contempt. But otherwise the attorneys found little to like.

"We're quite disappointed," said Michael Bien, lead lawyer for about 33,000 inmates in a class-action case over prison mental health care. "There is no justification for the delay. All of the things they are talking about doing now, they could have done years ago."

Republican critics of Brown's prison policies were upset that the state must now put more felons on parole, even through credits for good behavior.

"This court order is tragic," said a statement from state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), a frequent critic of Brown's criminal justice record. "Once released, these dangerous felons will threaten our local communities, where residents are already suffering from increased crime and where police agencies are overburdened."

But state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who had worked independently to negotiate a settlement between the state and the court, called the outcome "the best of both worlds."

The state now has the time to invest in rehabilitation programs aimed at keeping offenders from returning to prison once they are released, he said, while the inmate population "continues to be reduced in real and enforceable ways."

Steinberg, an advocate for the revision of California's sentencing laws, nodded to political realities by adding, "There's no question sentencing reform has to be the twin of these investments.... It is probably better in a non-election year."

Brown also has acknowledged the political realities of the prolonged crisis. He has been meeting with law enforcement agencies and prosecutors across the state to talk about the effects of his first pass at reducing prison crowding — a law that since late 2011 has diverted lower-level felons and parole violators to county jails, many of them already overcrowded.

Under the judges' Monday order, Brown must immediately go forward with plans he announced last month. Those include expanding eligibility for parole for inmates who are medically incapacitated or those over 60 who have spent at least 25 years in prison.

He must also allow "second-strikers" whose crimes were nonviolent to shave off up to a third of their prison time through good behavior or participation in rehabilitation programs. And those prisoners must be considered for parole when they have served half their sentence.

Brown's administration also agreed to open programs at 13 prisons to help prepare inmates for release and to pursue discussions on opening similar facilities in some counties.

The two-year grace period from U.S. District Judges Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt frees up money Brown said he would have otherwise used to lease more custody beds. In his budget proposal last month, the governor earmarked $40 million for the reentry programs now required by the court.

The judges' order also comes with a continued freeze on the number of beds California can rent in other states.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

via: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-brown-prisons-20140211,0,607017.story#ixzz2t2NwoStC

Brown again asks judges for more time to reduce prison crowding

By Paige St. John

January 23, 2014, 9:48 p.m.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown has again asked federal judges for more time to reduce crowding in California's prisons and, in an about-face, proposed to free inmates early if he misses an extended deadline.

California is under orders to remove thousands of inmates from state lockups by April 18, a deadline already delayed more than a year.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday, Brown asked for an additional two years. That is "the minimum length of time needed to allow new reform measures to responsibly draw down the prison population while avoiding the early release of inmates," the documents say.

Brown has declared repeatedly that releasing prisoners early would jeopardize public safety. But to assure the court of his good intentions, the governor now proposes that the court appoint a monitor with the power to release prisoners if the state fails to meet a 2016 deadline or a series of smaller benchmarks before then.

The monitor — not Brown's administration — would decide whom to set free, according to the proposal.

Lawyers for inmates made their own filing to the judges Thursday, calling for the appointment of a federal compliance officer to monitor inmate numbers. They called the shift in the governor's position a positive step but said releases should begin now.

"It delays what should have been done years ago," said Don Specter, lead attorney in one of two class-action cases that caused the judges to impose crowding limits four years ago.

The judges, who have been hearing lawsuits over inadequate care of inmates, have suggested they might accept a further delay in return for immediate improvements in that care. But state officials recently conceded that the prison population is growing, not shrinking: As of Wednesday, officials reported that the prisons were at 144% of their designed capacity, with 117,500 inmates.

Brown contends that even so, he can meet the court-ordered crowding limits by making more inmates eligible for parole. In the budget plan he recently released, the governor said he would increase parole options for medically frail and elderly inmates and allow some repeat offenders to shorten their sentences with good behavior.

In Thursday's filing, Brown said he was also willing to consider paroling some repeat felons, sentenced under California's "three strikes" law, if they have served at least half of their sentences. The offer would be restricted to those convicted of a second strike — which comes with a doubled sentence — if that crime was not violent.

Brown also proposes immediately releasing murderers and other inmates serving life sentences who already have been deemed suitable for parole but were given future release dates.

Christine Ward, director of the Sacramento-based Crime Victims Action Alliance, was upset by the state's proposal. "We are in just a horrible, horrible, horrible position right now, with the courts forcing the state to come up with ridiculous plans of action," she said. "If the wrong people are let out, somebody could be killed."

The governor agreed to set aside $81 million for rehabilitation programs if the court agrees to the two-year delay. He also expressed an intention to open pre-release centers at 13 prisons within the year to help inmates prepare for freedom.

California has more than 12,000 prisoners in private prisons and county-run facilities, according to reports by the corrections department. The court filing states that a two-year delay would avoid "sending thousands more inmates to private prisons in other states."

In a proposed order included in the filing, the administration admits that even if granted more time, the state intends to lease more cells in private prisons, county jails and community-owned corrections centers.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-prisons-20140123,0,1442682.story#ixzz2rMCl5nSl

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

Governor Brown, put money into California's communities and stop warehousing humans!

My name is Nicole and I am living in a homeless shelter provided by Time For Change Foundation.  This was the only option available to me when I left prison December 3^rd after serving 17 years, with $200 in my pocket and the clothes on my back. 

Although I had employment skills prior to my incarceration and gained more during over the years in prison, I do not qualify for monetary assistance.  If it weren’t for programs like Time For Change Foundation, I would be living on the street, which would violate my parole and I would become a statistic of recidivism. 

Without a job, I am living at the poverty level.  I am here to raise my voice to call on Governor Brown to build a road out of poverty in California for myself and the 8.7 million Californian’s.

Until very recently I was part of the overcrowding in the California prison system.  I felt firsthand the impact of Governor Brown’s efforts to reduce the prison population and his repeated failures to follow the letter and the intent of the numerous federal court orders to reduce the prison population.  

Time and again Governor Brown has suggested the solution of building more prisons, spending more money outsourcing inmates and attempting to warehouse human beings instead of looking at the cost effectiveness, both financially and on a human level, of spending that money on rehabilitation instead.

California does not need more prisons.  California does not need to ship its prisoners out to other states.  California needs to provide avenues not only for reintegration following incarceration but for survival to avoid incarceration in the first place.  

Putting the money he seeks to allocate to building more prisons, back into the California communities, will ultimately save the State money and improve the lives of Californians.  Reallocating funds to restorations to Medi-Cal, childcare, CalWORKs, SSI and IHSS will accomplish these goals.

It is my sincere hope that Governor Brown will look at the whole picture, the long range goals, the potential in many people who are currently living below the poverty level and make some sweeping changes to the proposed budget to really invest in the people of California and their unlimited capacity to thrive if given just a little assistance.

Nicole La FontaineTime for Change Foundation

Prison secretary seeks delay in inmate court order

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Sentencing commission, suggested in Sacramento, faces long odds

Key California lawmakers this summer suggested that a commission to review and overhaul criminal sentences not only could bring coherence to a disjointed system but also perhaps ease chronic prison overcrowding in the long term.

But the idea now appears stalled, despite the incentive of federal litigation that could force Gov. Jerry Brown to release as many as 10,000 inmates next spring. Lawmakers chastened by a history of unsuccessful sentencing commission bills hold out little hope that this time could be different.

“These issues are hard,” Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said in an interview last week. “They’re hard to bite off politically.”

The notion of a panel to overhaul California’s penal code has percolated for decades but eluded proponents time and again. Supporters argue that a steady accumulation of different regulations, layered on top of one another over time, has led to a labyrinth of sentencing guidelines.

“There is a lot of disproportionate punishment in our penal code, and that’s because not uncommonly a horrible crime may be committed in someone’s district and so the response is legislatively to get tougher,” said Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. “These are emotional issues,” he added, “and to have politics infused in all of our decision-making does not create the most sound public policy.”

State sentencing commissions are typically independent bodies, appointed by officials, that study a state’s galaxy of sentencing laws and condense them into a comprehensive framework. They issue guidelines that would increase or decrease sentences for various categories of crimes.

That troubles some law enforcement leaders who see the potential for weakened sentences. And it rattles lawmakers wary about constituents – or future electoral opponents – who could hold them responsible for changes that emanated from an unelected body.

“No legislative body wants to give up power,” said Rep. Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, a former Assembly speaker who pursued a sentencing commission during her time in the Legislature.

Historically, the state’s law enforcement community has been hostile to allowing appointed entities to dictate consequences for crimes. District attorneys, sheriffs and police chiefs have opposed past efforts, raising concerns about who would sit on panels with expansive authority to reshape criminal justice.

“In California, the only times sentencing commissions come up, it has been code for sentence reductions,” said Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully.

But the idea resurfaced this summer when Gov. Jerry Brown, seeking to satisfy a federal order to reduce California’s prison population without resorting to more early releases, proposed spending an additional $315 million to provide more cells. Steinberg broke with the governor, rallying Senate Democrats behind an alternate plan that questioned expanded capacity.

Among other provisions, Steinberg’s blueprint included a detailed plan for immediately creating an 18-member sentencing commission that could provide recommendations by the end of 2014. A letter to Brown argued that “short-term fixes provide no sustainable remedy.”

Steinberg’s letter said the panel would make recommendations aimed at “long-term prison capacity, staying within the (prison capacity) cap, including changes in criminal sentencing and evidence-based programming for criminal offenders.”

He included private poll results that showed nearly three-fourths of Californians supported a panel “to streamline California’s criminal statutes with the goal of safely reducing prison costs and maximizing public safety.”

But by summer’s end, the governor got his cash infusion. The final bill also created a special corrections policy committee tasked with broadly examining criminal justice in California.

Last week, Steinberg called sentencing reform “a key piece” of rethinking the state’s criminal justice system. But he expressed doubt that substantial changes would materialize in the coming legislative session.

While Brown is considered an overwhelming favorite to win a second term (he has yet to formally declare a campaign), potential Republican challengers perceive the governor as vulnerable on public safety. They have hammered his plan, known as prison realignment, to shuffle low-level offenders to county jails.

“I hope there’s a lot of discussion on it this year,” Steinberg said of a sentencing overhaul, “but my expectation is it is what will largely be a second-term issue for Gov. Brown.”

This session, Leno carried his second consecutive bill easing penalties for simple drug possession.Brown vetoed it.

Part of Leno’s argument emphasized the state’s uneven sentencing statutes, which make possession of cocaine a felony but allow possession of Ecstasy or methamphetamine to be charged as misdemeanors. Leno cited such inconsistencies in arguing that the sentencing commission is “an idea whose time has come,” adding that the state’s struggles to reduce its prison population“only underscores the need for it.”

“This is not a radical notion or a novel idea,” Leno said, pointing to more than 20 other states that have established similar commissions.

Bass described a similar scenario when, as Assembly speaker, she pushed a sentencing commission bill in 2009. Then, as now, California was grappling with a federal court order to trim its prison population, and some saw a durable solution in an overhaul of sentencing laws. But the bill collapsed, marking at least the 12th time in the last 25 years lawmakers have pressed the concept and failed.

“I viewed it as an opportunity to put something in place that would prevent us from being in the same situation again,” Bass said. She attributed the measure’s failure in part to lawmakers fearing they would be “barraged” with electoral challenges.

Past sentencing commission efforts have self-destructed because the panel’s recommendations, though subject to legislative approval, would have carried the force of law, argued Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley.

By contrast, Steinberg proposed a purely advisory body.

After seeing previous resentencing campaigns stymied, Hancock said an advisory commission may be the only tenable approach. Even if a commission’s recommendations remain just that, Hancock said she would push to see them implemented.

“It’s just so important to cast some rational light on what goes on with our sentencing that I would be happy to see one that makes discretionary recommendations,” Hancock said.

“As long as I chair the Public Safety Committee in the Senate,” Hancock added, “those recommendations would not sit on the shelf.”

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/12/23/6021724/sentencing-commission-suggested.html#storylink=cpy

Jerry Brown meets with wardens amid prison negotiations

Facing a three-month deadline to reduce California's prison population, Gov. Jerry Brown said he plans to meet today with 34 wardens and a dozen top administrators of the prison system.

At the meetings, tentatively scheduled for 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. today, the governor said he planned to ask the wardens about overcrowding, healthcare, drug treatment, mental health and vocational learning.

Brown said the appointments demonstrate his engagement in the process and commitment to the issue as the state continues negotiations with its court-appointed mediator. He described the meetings with the mediator as "collaborative and informative" and said talks with plaintiff's lawyers have made him optimistic about reaching a resolution.

"This is a matter that I am very interested in, very committed to getting it right," Brown told reporters Tuesday at a school event in Sacramento. "So that's why we are going very carefully."

The Brown administration has significantly reduced the number of inmates in part by shifting responsibility for certain low-level offenders from the state prison system to counties. The administration now wants more time to allow various rehabilitation programs to take hold as a way to avoid shuttling thousands more inmates to private prisons outside of California.

"We have to understand that when government embarks on major programs, it should do so with humility, and caution and a lot of planning," he said.

"So whenever people say, 'Hey, we need 10,000 fewer people in prison - do something,' I want to do that something very careful, particularly when it comes on top of 25,000 fewer, and on top of 15,000 fewer a few years before."

Editor's note: This post was updated at 2 p.m. to reflect the number of wardens.
PHOTO: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at the California Chamber of Commerce's annual host breakfast in Sacramento on May 22, 2013. The Associated Press/Rich Pedroncelli

via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/11/gov-jerry-brown-to-meet-with-wardens-amid-prison-negotiations.html

California gets extra time to reduce prison crowding: another month

SACRAMENTO — Federal judges on Monday gave Gov.Jerry Brown an additional 28 days to meet their order to reduce prison crowding.

Brown, whose administration has been in court-ordered talks with inmates' lawyers in search of a long-term solution to overcrowding, now has until Feb. 24 to remove about 9,600 prisoners from state lockups.

The three-judge panel also said Monday that the negotiations must continue. State appellate judge Peter J. Siggins has been mediating those confidential talks, and on Monday he was told to provide another update in mid-November.

The judicial trio did not describe the state of the discussions in their order, and Siggins' report was confidential.

Last month, Brown filed a plan to expand rehabilitation services in hopes of eventually reducing new offenses by inmates who return to society, and he asked for three years to lower prisoner numbers that way. The judges gave him an extra month instead, moving their deadline to Jan. 27 from Dec. 31 and ordering the talks.

Corrections spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said Monday the agency was pleased by the judges' extension of their deadline and would work with local government and law enforcement groups to "build upon California's landmark reforms to our criminal justice system."

Inmate advocates and civil rights groups want the state to take a different path from the one Brown has outlined in court filings. The groups want reductions in criminal penalties, expanded parole programs for the sick and old, and a backlog cleared for thousands of prisoners eligible to have their cases reheard.

California is halfway toward meeting the judges' inmate population cap through contracts for 3,180 beds in privately owned facilities and an increase in the number of prisoners sent to firefighting camps around the state.

The latest contract, announced Monday, is an $11-million, five-year deal with the private prison company Geo Group. California already has 8,300 prisoners in private prisons in other states, but the federal judges have temporarily blocked further such transfers.

In 2009, federal judges ordered California's prison population reduced, declaring that overcrowding was the root of unconstitutionally poor inmate care. Despite construction of a new medical prison and a court-run healthcare system, lawyers for prisoners say that care remains substandard and that mentally ill prisoners are mistreated.

California's corrections department "has never taken its obligation to provide basic healthcare seriously," said Don Specter, lead attorney for the Prison Law Office, testifying Monday at a legislative hearing on the state's prison problems.

The hearing was mostly a basic briefing, and no corrections officials testified. Assembly Public Safety Committee Chairman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) said the next hearing, Nov. 13, will focus on alternative programs and sentencing.

Brown has taken the position since January that California's prison conditions are vastly improved. But court experts have continued to report poor medical services at some prison hospitals. A federal court has refused to relinquish control over mental health services, and the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed Brown's attempts to appeal capacity limits that he argues are arbitrary.

A report last week from the corrections department shows California's prison population up by more than 500 from a year ago, to more than 133,860 inmates.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

chris.megerian@latimes.com

via http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-prisons-20131022,0,1115000.story#axzz2j3QS5Rql

RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Jail spending will eat up future money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SKEWED PRIORITIES?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOT ENOUGH

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTHING BUT JAILS?

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

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

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

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

MORE DEPUTIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PRICE FOR SAFETY

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

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

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

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

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

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