(Calitics will promote to the front page a reasonable number of candidate diaries that the Editorial Board believes communicate substantive policy positions of which the Calitics community should be aware – promoted by jsw)

Last week, Governor Schwarzenegger introduced his latest bad idea for solving our state’s budget crisis: privatizing California’s prison system.

Prisons must be managed with public safety, inmate welfare, and rehabilitation as top priorities — not maximizing corporate profits. What’s more, we can’t facilitate the creation of new powerful corporations with the financial incentive to lobby for the imprisonment of more and more residents of our state.

Turning over control of some or all of California’s prisons to private corporations would be a disaster for California — and we can’t let it happen.

So I’ve launched a new petition — on Facebook and also on my campaign website — to spread the word and build opposition to Governor Schwarzenegger’s privatization proposal. I hope you’ll take a minute to join me, urging the governor and your legislators not to privatize California’s prisons.

For six years, we’ve had a governor who failed to manage our prisons — and now he wants to avoid responsibility for the consequences of his mismanagement.

Solving this crisis requires a serious and thoughtful reorganization of the way California manages incarcerations, prisons, and public safety systems in general. To reduce the prison population, we must deter crime and reach young people early, before they begin down the criminal path, channeling them into more productive pursuits.

Please sign my petition to Governor Schwarzenegger and your legislators now (on Facebook here, and on my campaign website here).

Prison and sentencing reform have many complex elements, and one-stop-shop solutions such as privatization are not the answer.

For Governor Schwarzenegger to proclaim that the answer to our failing and costly prison system is to move from public to private management is out of touch with reality.

Thanks so much for standing with me and making your voice heard on this critical issue.

— Chris Kelly, Democratic candidate for California Attorney General