A Great Act - Public Safety & Rehabilitation Act of 2016

Great news! An incredible act called the Public Safety & Rehabilitation Act of 2016 (PSRA) is trying to improve public safety, and save California taxpayers money by reducing frivolous spending on our correctional system. One pivotal point of this act, is to transfer the power back to the judge and away from the District Attorney, to decide whether a minor of 14 years of age or older should be tried as an adult. Key factors have to be considered when making this decision such as: the minor's family and school life. It has to be a clear process to decide the outcome of the minor’s life.

Next, for those who are incarcerated with non-violent offenses, Public Safety & Rehabilitation Act of 2016 will add funds for rehabilitation, and will give credit for completion of educational programs with an early release. Ultimately, it is the next step to improve Prop 47.

Altogether, 1 million signatures need to be collected in order for this act to make it on the ballot in November. Governor Brown supports and is willing to sign this act, but requested 100,000 signatures by the end of April 2016 be gathered.  

Equally important, collaborative help is needed for the collection of the mandatory signatures from all that are in support of this act. Let’s be overt, prison reform is needed in the state of California, and this is a productive step towards obtaining that goal. 

For more information or to support the (PSRA) contact Vanessa Rhodes at vanessarhodes@gmail.com or visit SafetyandRehabilitation.com.

By: 

Porscha N. Dillard

Special Project Coordinator 

Time For Change Foundation

Background Relief Clinic

Want to get your records expunged?

Come to the Background Relief Clinic!

Friday February 13, 2015

2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Universalist Unitarian Church

3657 Lemon Street 

Riverside CA  92501

Suspected Drug Users Used as Classroom Subjects

The California Highway Patrol has been stopping people suspected of using drugs and giving them a choice: either to face arrest or to be used as educational tools in the Drug Recognition Evaluator Program. The DRE Program is designed to help officers learn how to identify what drugs a suspect may be using. Their website includes a photo gallery of visual clues of drug abuse, with its models uncredited.

[image by Nick Fisher, https://www.flickr.com/people/cobrasick/]

Much of our legal system bends toward free or near-free labor: even Whole Foods is dependent on prisoners for its cheeses. In California, prisoners get paid 30 cents - 95 cents per hour, before up to fifty percent is deducted for court-ordered restitutions and fines. Since in the city of Fresno, police can stop anyone pushing a shopping cart, this program's use of private citizens as classroom aids seems particularly targeted, like much of the justice system, at the addicted and indigent.

Though drug abuse is more common among white people than those who are black, in California (as in many places) the arrest statistics would suggest the opposite. It’s safe to say that law enforcement is biased toward race-based arrests. That is part of what is so worrying about this program – disproportionate numbers of black and brown people are being picked up off the streets and put in front of officers for examination, with no compensation for their time or labor.

Of course, it would cost money to pay people to appear before a classroom of law enforcement officers, and California famously doesn't have much of that. That doesn't even factor in the cost of prosecuting subjects after forcing them to participate -- for according to Fresno's DRE instructor, Sergeant Gilbert Perisol, those chosen to participate in the program actually still risk arrest: "We don't do a lot of bartering… If I see signs and symptoms of drug influence, you can be arrested."

There may be a solution, though - something that would save the state money, and eliminate any reason for sweeping people off the streets without cause: halt the arrests and prosecution of nonviolent drug offenders.

If we are truly concerned about drug addiction, we can offer rehabilitation. Treatment would respect the fundamental humanity of addicts, and save our state both money andprison space. Of course, people in rehab are not traditionally compelled to work for sub-minimum wage, but evaluation of fair pay is a necessary step forward for California as well.

Harry Waksberg is a Los Angeles-based writer and lazeabout. He and his dog are prison abolitionists.

Guest Author: 

Harry Waksberg

via: Ella Baker Center

http://ellabakercenter.org/blog/2014/07/suspected-drug-users-used-as-classroom-subjects

State begins early releases of nonviolent prisoners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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

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

Stanford University studies look at how California's prison realignment is playing out

The state's prison realignment program shifted thousands of would-be state prisoners to local control. But it didn't set up a mechanism for tracking what happened to the population or the impact on the counties where they ended up.

Now, two papers out of Stanford Law School's Criminal Justice Center look at how realignment is playing out in California counties. 

How realignment is perceived

In the first study, Stanford Law Professor Joan Petersilia spoke with 125 local stakeholders: police chiefs, district attorneys, public defenders, probation officers, judges, and sheriffs. The idea was to get a sense of how realignment is going. It resulted in "a portrait of counties struggling, often heroically, to carry out an initiative that was poorly planned and imposed upon them almost overnight."

Nonetheless, Petersilia found most law enforcement accepted that realignment is "here to stay," and that "the old system was yielding disappointing results." 

Perhaps the most optimistic and supportive group, probation officers, felt realignment: "gave them an opportunity to fully test whether well-tailored rehabilitation services can keep lower-level felony offenders from committing new crimes and returning to prison."

Petersilia also offers a number of recommendations based on the conversations:

• Create a database of state prisoners released to county probation supervision.
• Consider an offender's past crimes when determining his or her level of post-prison supervision (parole or probation).
• Cap county jail sentences at three years, and consider prison time for repeat probation violators (like sex offenders who cut off their GPS monitors). 

Such changes, Petersilia suggests, could help law enforcement deal with the challenges realignment has brought. 

Where the money is going

The second study examines how California counties are spending billions of dollars they've been allocated by the state to implement realignment.

Looking at the county's plans for the first year of realignment, University of Denver Sociology Professor Jeffrey Lin found that counties varied in whether they allocated more of their realignment dollars to law enforcement or treatment and rehabilitation.

Lin found counties that had relatively fewer per capita law enforcement personnel (like Riverside and Kings counties) used realignment dollars to beef up their law enforcement ranks.

Other counties that invested more heavily in law enforcement (like Los Angeles and Kern counties) may have felt compelled to invest in law enforcement because of higher crime rates and politically, their "relatively high preference for prison for drug crimes."

Those investing more in treatment and rehabilitation also shared some characteristics.

A category of counties that included Alameda and Sonoma tended to have high Black unemployment rates and popular county sheriff's. In these counties, Lin hypothesizes: "high confidence in the sheriff’s office may allow key leaders to address those needs in less politically popular ways—i.e., pursuing treatment as a solution to crime problems."

Overall, "Sheriff and Law Enforcement spending is generally a product of local needs (crime conditions and dedication to law enforcement) and preference for punishment."

Whereas, "Programs and Services spending fundamentally revolves around electoral
confidence in the Sheriff."

Lin adds the caveat that only the first year of planned realignment spending was included in the study. He plans to follow up to see how the trends hold up over time. 

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

California signs private-prison deal

SACRAMENTO -- California has signed a contract with private prison contractor Geo Group to lease space for 1,400 inmates in overcrowded state lockups.

The company announced the contract early Monday morning, even before Gov. Jerry Brown learns whether federal judges will grant his request for a three-year delay in the courts' orders to cap the prison population. The governor's lawyers have asked judges to make their own decision by Friday.

Geo Group issued a news release Monday from its Florida headquarters announcing the company had inked deals with the state for two lower-security prisons it owns in California, in Adelanto and McFarland. The company said the contracts are for five years, and it expects to begin receiving inmates by the end of the year.

It estimated its annual revenue from the deal at more than $30 million.

Brown has asked federal judges to delay its order to remove some 9,600 inmates from state prisons by the end of December, in trade for promising to restore $150 million to a grant that funds community probation and rehabilitation programs.

Brown's lawyers have said the state will go ahead with some private prison leases within California even if the delay is granted. The state corrections department has already begun the process of identifying inmates to be moved.

State Senate Democrats propose alternative to Brown's prison plan

SACRAMENTO - Democratic leaders of the State Senate on Wednesday proposed an extran $200 million annually for rehabilitation, drug and mental health treatment as an alternative to Gov. Jerry Brown's plan for reducing prison overcrowding.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said Wednesday that his Senate Democratic Caucus wants the spending in exchange for a three-year extension of federal judges' Dec. 31 deadline for removing more than 9,600 inmates from state prisons.

Steinberg said the Senate proposal was preferable to Brown's plan to spend $315 million this year and $415 million in each of the following two years on alternate housing for inmates.

"Temporarily expanding California's prison capacity is neither sustainable nor fiscally responsible," Steinberg wrote to Brown and inmates' attorneys Wednesday. Inmate lawsuits led to the judges' ruling that state prisons are unconstitutionally crowded.

Any extension would have to be approved by the judges, who have castigated Brown for stalling on obeying their order to shed more prisoners.

Steinberg, flanked by 16 Democratic senators in a Capitol hallway, said the Senate plan is modeled on a 2009 state program that reduced new prison admissions by nearly 9,600.

The plan won a quick endorsement from the prisoners' attorneys.

"Sen. Steinberg's substantive proposals are acceptable to us and we are open to an extension" if all parties can agree on an approach "that will resolve the chronic overcrowding problem in the state's prisons," the attorneys said in a statement.

The lawyers said they were willing to meet with the governor and discuss ways to end federal court oversight of prison medical care, imposed because the judges said overcrowding led to inadequate healthcare and needless inmate deaths.

The judges are unlikely to extend their Dec. 31 deadline without evidence that the proposal would result in meaningful policy changes, said legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school atUC Irvine.

"I think the court wants to be sure this is not another delay," Chemerinsky said.

Steinberg's plan drew sharp criticism from Gov. Brown and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles).

"It would not be responsible to turn over California's criminal justice policy to inmate lawyers who are not accountable to the people," Brown said in a statement.

"My plan avoids early releases of thousands of prisoners and lays the foundation for longer-term changes, and that's why local officials and law enforcement support it," he said.

Pérez said in a separate statement that he was "deeply skeptical about Senator Steinberg's approach." It would give more power to "prisoner plaintiffs who favor mass release of prisoners," Pérez said.

Steinberg countered that his plan would also avoid early releases. But there may be no more money available for rehabilitation if the state spends more than $1 billion on incarceration over the next three years, the senator said.

Steinberg suggested that a middle ground might be found. "Does this lead to conversation that leads to a solution and compromise? I hope," Steinberg said. "You know me. It's not my way or the highway. We are putting down a settlement proposal here."

But time is short. Steinberg called for an agreement by Sept. 13, the Legislature's last meeting day this year. The settlement would provide for a panel of experts to set a new prison population cap.

In addition, an advisory panel would be formed to restructure sentencing laws so fewer offenders would be sent to prison in the long run.

The state "cannot assume that the plaintiffs and their lawyers, and the federal court, will agree to a three-year extension," said Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber).

On the other hand, nobody wants to be responsible for releasing thousands of inmates early because of a stalemate, said Raphael J. Sonenshein, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

"You'd have to think they are going to find some accommodation," Sonenshein said.

Meanwhile, Steinberg canceled a Senate confirmation hearing for two corrections department directors appointed by the governor.

"We have additional questions about the administration's ongoing corrections policy," said Steinberg spokesman Mark Hedlund. "It makes sense to wait before we consider those two appointments."


By Patrick McGreevy
patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

Times staff writers Anthony York and Paige St. John contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

Stop the Revolving Jail Door

Split sentencing, in which a felon serves a portion of his time in jail and another portion in the community but under supervision, shows promise.

By The Times editorial board

June 29, 2013, 5:00 p.m.

Criminal defendants convicted of felonies in California used to be sentenced to state prison. Most, after serving 50% of their terms, were released on parole and returned to their communities. And of them, most ended up back in prison, either because they committed new crimes or because they were caught violating parole. California was good at running felons through a revolving door and very bad at guiding their safe return to society: getting the addicted off drugs, getting treatment for the mentally ill, getting those with antisocial and criminal mind-sets into structured, supervised programs with reliable records of reforming those former inmates who were amenable to reform.

The state had a Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, but in most cases it neither corrected nor rehabilitated. It kept criminals incapacitated, but when they returned to their neighborhoods, they were at least as dangerous as when they were sent away.

Today, defendants convicted of felonies defined by law as violent, serious or sexual continue to go to state prison; and despite widespread public misunderstanding and assertions to the contrary by officials who ought to know better, defendants convicted of lesser felonies also go to state prison if they have rap sheets that include past violent, serious or sexual offenses.
But since October 2011, newly convicted "non-non-non" felons — those whose offenses are not violent, serious or sexual — with no current or previous record of serious convictions go to county jail. Just like their counterparts in state prison, they will serve their time, get out and return to their communities.

And then what? The addicted and the mentally ill will most likely remain untreated; they and other inmates badly in need of life skills, anger management counseling or similar programs will leave jail at complete liberty, with an unstructured reentry into society. Their prospects for success — shunning trouble, getting work, leading productive, crime-free lives, leaving their neighbors safe — will be about the same as those of felons returning from state prison: not good.

Evidence has shown, time and again, that the outcomes are better for inmates who begin programs in jail — and who then return to society under supervision while continuing mandatory treatment and education. There are three choices for dealing with inmates, and three well-documented outcomes: no treatment or education in or out of jail, and a poor chance at success; compelled treatment and education in jail, and slightly better chances; and mandatory treatment in jail followed by mandatory treatment and monitoring, for a period of time, on return to society, with much improved prospects of breaking the cycle of offending, being locked up, returning to the streets and offending again. And keep in mind: The beneficiaries of these programs are not just the offenders but also those who are victimized by them.

AB 109, the criminal justice realignment laws adopted in 2011 that gave counties new responsibilities over low-level felons, also proposed a reinvention of the reentry process to deal with criminal recidivism. Defendants could receive what is known as a "split sentence," with a portion of the time to be served in jail and another portion to be served in the community, under supervision by probation officers who would monitor mandatory participation in rehabilitation and other programs. The period served under supervision in the community, after release from jail, is known as a "tail."

In keeping with the spirit of realignment, which gives counties maximum flexibility to experiment, compile data, compare notes and adjust as necessary, AB 109 doesn't mandate split sentencing. Nor does it compel counties to abide by any formula or guideline in determining how much it can spend on programming, or what kind of programs to offer. Counties can decide whether to spend more of their realignment funding on incarceration or reentry.

Some counties — especially those already geared toward community-based corrections for their misdemeanor defendants — have embraced split sentencing. In Contra Costa County, for example, 90% of the AB 109 felony sentences are split. Other counties and their trial courts are also turning to split sentencing, pairing the post-incarceration tail with innovative and proven programs that reintroduce felons to their neighborhoods with carefully tailored treatment and scrutiny. Because more time is served under community supervision, jail cells are freed up for the most dangerous offenders.

So how tightly is the state's largest jurisdiction, Los Angeles County, embracing the opportunities presented by split sentencing? This county is bottom of the barrel, with a supervised tail in only 4% of sentences.

The reasons for the failure to use this proven tool are unimpressive. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are used to bargaining over custody time, not negotiating for tails. Defendants would rather do their time and return to the streets at full liberty. Prosecutors would rather maximize custody time than require post-custody programming. Judges defer to the lawyers' plea bargains when sentencing. The focus is shortsighted, aimed at efficient processing, not structured reentry or breaking the cycle of recidivism. The leader of a committee made up of local law enforcement officers, judges and county service providers told the Board of Supervisors last week that he expects no change in the number of split sentences here.

Lawmakers this year considered a bill that would have required courts to include at least a six-month tail on AB 109 sentences, helping sluggish counties to begin solving the recidivism problem even when they don't want to. Under heavy lobbying from prosecutors, the measure died in committee.

That's a shame. Los Angeles County and its courts are squandering the opportunity presented by AB 109 to return corrections and rehabilitation to the criminal justice system. If they can't make use of split sentencing on their own — and so far they have demonstrated that they can't — they will need to be pushed.

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

California's Recidivism Problem

Two years after the United States Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its severely overcrowded prisons by more than 30,000 inmates, the state is still trying to figure out how to comply. Governor Jerry Brown released a new plan in early May that called for the early release of elderly inmates and the relocation of thousands of others to private lockups and state fire camps.

These are undoubtedly fine ideas, but they will never solve the fundamental problem of California's prisons. To do that, Governor Brown and his administration will have to confront the state's recidivism problem: too many people are released from California's prisons, return home and then proceed to commit new crimes or violate parole rules. Before long, they are back in prison.

California has the second highest rate of recidivism in the country, according to the Pew Center on the States. Nearly 58 percent of the state's offenders are sent back to prison within three years of their release, according to the Pew Center.

Unless this cycle is broken with bold actions -- unless people can be diverted from a lifetime of crime, repeatedly shuttling into and out of prison -- California will remain stuck trying to jam too many inmates into too few prison cells. This pattern carries enormous costs, both human and financial.

Under pressure from the courts, the state has a unique opportunity. It can confront its correctional problems head-on by shifting its priorities from incarceration to rehabilitation.

That would involve moving many more nonviolent offenders from prisons into alternative community programs for drug treatment and job training. The best cure for recidivism is for ex-offenders to learn how to stay drug-free and to develop skills for real, full-time jobs. There is nothing like a job to keep someone from reverting to a life of crime.

To do this, California would find itself relying as never before on nonprofit and perhaps even for-profit social service providers. These have traditionally been the organizations that work with inmates and parolees to help them re-enter society successfully. People who have spent time in prison need help, often a lot of help, to develop the necessary skills that lead to a job, independence and a responsible life.

It can be done. In fact, it is done on a small scale every day in places around the country. But it is also costly. Over the long run that initial expenditure can produce extraordinary savings for taxpayers. Right now, California pays an enormous sum, about $9 billion a year, to fill its prisons to overflowing. Since 1980, the state's spending on higher education has declined by 13 percent, adjusted for inflation, while its spending for corrections has increased by more than 400 percent.

Given the enormity of the task, California and other state governments burdened with huge corrections costs, are going to have to learn how to distinguish social service providers that produce positive outcomes from those that do not. It makes no sense to commit to serious reform, investing in drug treatment and job training, if you select social service agencies that are unable to help former offenders stay out of prison.

For rehabilitation to succeed, California will have to select organizations that can produce verifiable results. Social service agencies will have to use transparent, performance-based data to track their work, and they will have to be held much more accountable for what they do than they are now.

Some nonprofit and for-profit groups will no doubt be put off by such rigorous demands, but others, including mine, The Doe Fund, will welcome them.

For more than 20 years, our Ready, Willing & Able program has been helping former offenders in New York City and Philadelphia to develop skills, find work and become productive citizens. Along with like-minded groups, we are not afraid of having our work measured and judged. We want to know if we are really improving our clients' lives.

With support and guidance, people can lift themselves from unemployment, crime, drug addiction and homelessness. Over the last two decades, thousands of formerly homeless men -- 70 percent of whom are former offenders -- have completed our program; they have found private sector jobs, lived independently and remained sober and drug free.

Reconfiguring California's criminal justice system will require commitment and ambition, and it will be expensive, at least at the outset. But it could produce extraordinary changes and would surely save the state vast amounts in the future. Lowering the recidivism rate would significantly reduce the size of the state prison population, saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It would also cut the crime rate.

California will have to apply new rigor in contracting out social services and be willing to experiment with innovative strategies to meet the burden of the Supreme Court's order. But unless it makes a concerted new effort to prepare inmates and parolees for life after prison, the cycle of arrest and re-arrest will surely continue. And California's prisons will continue to overflow.

via The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harriet-mcdonald/californias-recidivism-pr_b_3267575.html