If you’ve listened to the news on the radio today, you may have heard something about the California prison litigation at the Supreme Court.  On one hand, it boils down to a relatively arcane bit of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which governs, well, how prison litigation happens in federal court.  The state is arguing, amongst many things,  that the federal court erred in not providing enough discretion on how to reduce prison population.

It’s not that California’s been ordered to provide Cadillac care; today, one inmate dies every eight days due to shoddy medical care. The suicide rate in California prisons is twice the national average.

Despite efforts by the state to improve the situation over two decades, it’s still bad.

Last year, three federal judges ordered California to reduce the prison population. They decided that the only cure for the situation was to reduce overcrowding in California prisons; California prisons are packed to nearly double capacity.

They ordered California to release 46,000 inmates, about a third of the total, in the next two years. California appealed that order, and the U.S. Supreme Court hears that appeal today.

California says that the three federal judges overstepped their authority, violating a federal statute called the Prison Litigation Reform Act. That act says that the only way federal judges can order a prison reduction by a state is if the reduction is the only way to solve an ongoing violation; the ongoing violation in this case is the lack of medical and mental health care. It has to be the only solution to the problem. (SoCal Public Radio)

Of course, it isn’t like the state has really done anything at all to reduce overcrowding in the last two years. Basically, we’ve been sitting back and focusing on fighting the litigation rather than the actual crux of the problem.  I’m not sure that even in the best of circumstances it is possible to reduce the population in the two year window, but we didn’t really try.  The Bee ties this in with the recent victory of Kamala Harris in the AG race.  (Notes: I worked on her campaign, and the Bee endorsed her opponent.)

She thinks there is a better way to hold nonviolent criminals accountable. She points to Back on Track, a San Francisco program that diverts nonviolent criminals, mostly drug dealers, to job training, community service, drug treatment and school, instead of prison or jail. She says the program saves San Francisco $1 million in jail costs for every 100 offenders who go through it, and twice that much in court costs, while reducing recidivism.

It is noteworthy that Harris will claim victory today at the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco, the rehabilitation facility which, as its website boasts, “has been teaching drug abusers, ex-convicts and others who have hit bottom to turn their lives around since 1971.”

As attorney general, Harris will have no power to reduce sentences. She won’t be able to alter how local prosecutors charge crimes. Nor will she be able to refuse to defend the state when federal judges challenge its overcrowded prison system.

But she can use the bully pulpit to push innovative approaches to the broken justice system. If it were smarter on crime, perhaps California wouldn’t need a federal court order to cut prison population.(SacBee)

For many years, we’ve been beating ourselves up trying to get “Tougher” on Crime, as if there was some sort of choice on “Tough” vs. “Soft.”  But, that’s one of the things that attracted my interest when Kamala was running for DA back in 2003, that she saw this as the false dichotomy that it is.  Getting tough by simply applying the practices that got us into this mess will not solve anything, and it certainly won’t make us safer.  The way we become a safer, and more productive, state is to work to reintegrate those that have made the bad decisions that land them in our prison system, and work to get them back in a position to be productive citizens.  

Obviously this doesn’t work well for our violent criminals, but those are a minority in our prisons.  We are locking up hundreds of non-violent offenders, and teaching them to be better criminals, and probably making them more violent at the same time.  After all, prisons, especially overcrowded ones, are not really the best place to travel up Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs.

Programs like Back on Track work because they recognize that not all criminals are created equal.  We need to look for ways to not only punish, but also to do more for rehabilitation than Arnold’s method of slapping the word on the end of the name of the department.  We shouldn’t be playing some sort of ridiculous multiple choice question, where we can have better public safety, lower expenditures, or lower prison populations.  We can, and should, do all of the above.

If Kansas can get it, certainly California, the home of innovation, can do it as well.

One of the more noteworthy bills this year, a measure that would have banned the use of free plastic bags, got a boost from our outgoing Governor.

The bill to ban plastic grocery bags faced fierce opposition from the Virginia-based interest group American Chemistry Council and died in the Senate this year. Schwarzenegger said the measure might fare better in the current, post-election political climate.

“Of course we fell short a few votes, but we said, ‘We’ll be back,’ and we are back again,” Schwarzenegger said at a Capitol press conference. “And if we don’t get it done in December, we’ll get it done next year.”(SacBee)

Now, this bill faced a whole mess of opposition, and the plastics industry was able to kill it amongst the Senate Democratic caucus. Here’s the vote totals, but the “ModSquad” was in full effect here. The Dem Noes: Calderon, Correa, Ducheny, Florez, Negrete McLeod, Price, Romero, and Wolk.

I have to say the one that surprises me there is Sen. Wolk.  She represents much of the Delta, which is being flooded with these bags, killing scores of wildlife.  I’m not privy to her position on the issue, and the defeat of the measure wasn’t her doing alone.  However, I hope she’ll be able to move when it comes up next time.

But of course, the lobbyists aren’t going anywhere.  When asked about this latest push for the bill, here’s the response from the plastics people:

The American Chemistry Council’s Tim Shestek was in the crowd for the occasion. While supporters of the ban cheered their prospects for a second round, he said, “This is a bill that’s dead.”(SacBee)

No, not dead.  If China sees that banning plastic bags is in its state interest, surely the state of California can do the same.

Meg Whitman didn’t have much in the way of labor support.  However she was able to purchase secure one major public employee union, that of the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association.  You might remember this from the incident where CSLEA extracted a promise from Whitman to exclude law enforcement from any pension reform process.  That incident became quite the brouhaha, first in that the candidate then said that she might take public employee pension reform to the ballot (without mentioning the topic of pension reform), and then later because somebody on Jerry Brown’s staff called Whitman a “whore” for selling out to the union.

Of course, the “whore” episode only comes out because a) Jerry Brown didn’t properly hang up the phone and b) CSLEA handed that tape recording over to the media.  This had to be a very calculated and considered move.  You just don’t do something that creates that kind of personal attack without considering what you are doing.  In other words, CSLEA moved all in by releasing that tape…for the wrong side.

Sure, different interest groups play in politics, and politicians are used to that.  And CSLEA did spend a decent amount of money for Whitman,  about half a million on Whitman.  (And another $100K on the losing AG candidate, Steve Cooley.)  Money gets spent against you, and then you have to work with those interests if you overcome it.  In a democracy so awash with cash, it happens, and you deal with it.  However, it is simply human nature to have a longer memory when it comes to these more personal attacks.  One has to anticipate the same thing would have come into play for Whitman, if she had won, with anybody even remotely associated with Gloria Allred.

But CSLEA was in a more compromised position.  They haven’t had a contract since 2008, and will now have to negotiate with Jerry Brown’s team to get that contract.  And that’s amidst a slew of other labor unions that are looking for contracts that did support him.  Heck, even the prison guards (CCPOA) went pretty heavily for Brown. (Think Bobble Head Meg)

The Bee has an interesting article about the political strategist behind the CSLEA efforts, Don Novey.  Novey, who has a long background with CCPOA, was one of the godfathers of California’s Tough on Crime legislation and ballot measures.  He recognized that fear of crime was a powerful tool to get people to vote for measures and candidates that would benefit his ends.  And, in this situation with CSLEA, he lost:

Don Novey placed a multimillion-dollar bet on Meg Whitman to become California’s next governor and lost. Problem was, he played the game with other people’s money. A lot of it.

Now one of the state employee unions that the labor legend advised to oppose Gov.-elect Jerry Brown must negotiate a new contract with the incoming administration.(SacBee)

The article is worth reading, not only for the background on Novey, but the future of collective bargaining for law enforcement will certainly be affected by what happened in the election.

The bigger issue, pension reform, is still hanging out there.  Brown seems to be looking at the subject to cement some sort of legacy in this term.  He’ll have to overcome some very tepid supporters in labor, but certainly his position will be generally stronger than Whitman to shove something down.  The big danger here is that we might slam the middle class in the process.  If we are going to solve the long-term budget crisis, we will need to stop ignoring the revenue side of the equation.

Peruse the contributor list to the Yes on 26 campaign, and you’ll see a who’s who of corporate “baddies”.  Tobacco, oil, you get the gist.  If there was a company that I’ve written about with “Big” preceding the name, I’m pretty sure that they contributed to the campaign. And to the other side, they got few, if any, grassroots contributions.  It was a campaign of, by, and for the big corporations.  Unfortunately, the No on 26 campaign just didn’t have the resources to get that message out.  I’m not sure that would have been enough to change the final outcome, but it definitely would have pushed some votes.

So, now that we are stuck with it, what does it mean for the state.  Well, to put it bluntly it really, really stinks.  That being said, it looks like fees currently in place will probably remain unscathed.  But not all:

Initial word is that many fees won’t be affected. But veteran municipal lawyer Michael G. Colantuono said the proposition is likely to bring significant change in a handful of cases.

Colantuono, part of a League of California Cities task force analyzing Proposition 26, said the measure could affect fees charged by public power utilities, park districts and business improvement districts, to name a few.(SacBee)

But, want to use a fee to help out some poor folks? Well, screw you.  It starts getting very murky in this realm, with the potential for a lot of litigation to come on these questions.  What counts as a benefit? How much of the benefit has to go to the payors? And so on…

Oh, and as an added bonus for PG&E and CalEdison, it just gave them a boost over muni providers. Because muni electric providers fees are government fees, they can’t charge a fee to provide service for the poor, like private providers can.  Yatzee for them I suppose.

Look for a lot more to come out about what this breaks, and what it doesn’t over the next few years.