Why is California, saddled with perhaps the worst prison system in the US, perhaps the ONLY state not to understand that adding more beds is simply not a solution to the crisis?  Many other states are understanding that rehabilitation and treatment, which addresses the root causes of crime and seeks to lower recidivism rates, is the only way to get a handle on the growth in the prison industry.  And I’m not talking about some crunchy-Granola blue state like Vermont.  I’m talking about Kansas and Texas.

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) last month signed into law a prison plan that is winning accolades for its creativity. Among other measures, the $4.4 million package provides financial incentives to community correctional systems for reducing prisoner admissions and allows some low-risk inmates to reduce their sentences through education or counseling while behind bars.

Under the plan, the state offers grants to localities for preventing “conditions violations” such as parole or probation infractions – a leading cause of prison overcrowding in Kansas and nationwide. To qualify for the grants, communities must cut recidivism rates by at least 20 percent using a variety of support tactics […]

In Texas, which houses 153,000 prisoners, the Legislature recently approved a plan that lawmakers have characterized as one of the most significant changes in corrections in a decade. The package, part of the state budget awaiting Republican Gov. Rick Perry’s approval, would divert thousands of inmates from prison to rehabilitation facilities, where beds would free up twice a year as offenders get help and re-enter society. Notably, the focus on rehabilitation would put off construction of costly new prisons.

The plan includes a new 500-bed treatment facility for those incarcerated for driving while intoxicated (DWI) – offenders who often have substance-abuse problems but receive no rehabilitation and face stiff sentences without the possibility of parole, according to one state Senate aide.

“We have changed the course of the ship substantially in the state of Texas,” said state Rep. Jerry Madden (R), chairman of the House Corrections Committee and an engineer of the prison plan.

22 other states (warning, PDF) have undertaken sentencing reforms between 2004 and 2006 which will reduce incarceration rates.  In Nevada, they have recently reinstated a sentencing review commission that can recommend changes in sentencing laws (a similar measure passed the CA state Senate, but it’s unclear whether or not the Governor will sign it).  There is a growing feeling that the goal of reducing the prison population must be attacked at the level of rehabilitation and reducing sentences for nonviolent offenders.

Meanwhile, in California, we’re wedded to the same old failed solutions that have given us a broken system and the highest recidivism rate in the land.  I guess that’s post-partisan.

Blogging here from Calitics east, as I’m in Philadelphia the next several days.  And I know that it’s simply not de rigeur for an upstanding progressive blog to try and talk seriously about the Paris Hilton case, but hidden underneath it all is an untold story about the inadequacy of our prison system.

There’s a tug-of-war between the Sheriff and the county lockup administrators, who are treating Paris like they do every other inmate of her station, and the judge and city attorney, who are keen on making her an example due to public outrage and the fact that it’s just cool to hate Paris.  Here’s the thing, folks: she was sentenced to 45 days.  As the LA Times reported today, the average time served for a woman in county lockups with that length of sentence… is 4 days.

Although Hilton has become a lightning rod for many who see inequities in the justice system, the reality is more complicated.

Because of overcrowding in Los Angeles County jails, release criteria now call for female offenders to be freed after serving 10% of their projected sentence. So for an inmate who, like Hilton, was sentenced to 45 days, serving no more than four days would be the norm.

over…

Because Hilton represents a kind of simmering class resentment in our country, there’s this desire for prosecutors to throw the book at her, lest they have the villagers descend on them with torches.  The truth is that the city is dealing with her FAR more harshly than they would anyone else accused of the same crime.  And the entire reason for that is the breakdown of our overcrowded, understaffed prison system.

Notice also that the bloodlust to see Paris serve hard time is entirely consistent with the “tough on crime” rhetoric that has gotten us into this terrible mess in the first place.  And we know that continually pushing for longer and longer sentences has caused inmate populations to go up while crime rates go down, has severely limited the ability for the state to properly rehabilitate and treat prisoners and caused the recidivism rate to be the worst in the nation, and has practically eliminated any successful use of the corrections system.  Spending billions on more beds won’t change this, only a change in mindset in how we treat nonviolent offenders and establish equal treatment and equal possibility for redemption under the law.  The bill calling for an independent sentencing review commission, versions of which passed the Senate and Assembly this week, offer the best opportunity to actually change the mindset.

Paris Hilton is no saint.  She violated her probation, and then tried to get out of jail because she didn’t like it, and it almost worked.  But she’s only taking flak for it because of her profile.  This is happening every single day, where people can buy their way out of the general population, and work their way out of prison because there’s no room for holding them.  Let’s not be so naive to think that once Hilton’s out of the system in 6 weeks, it will be magically running any differently.

Thanks to Frank Russo for informing us that Sheila Kuehl’s SB 840, the single-payer health care plan which is the the result of years of work and refining, has passed the California State Senate for the second straight year.  The mostly party-line vote was 22-14, with only Lou Correa voting with the Republicans against the bill.

Speaker Nunez and President Pro Tem Perata have health care bills up for votes, likely tomorrow, that are expected to pass.  Then the other chamber gets a crack at them all, then there will be some process of negotiation and merging of all of these health care-related bills resulting in whatever the Governor and the Legislative leaders decide is an acceptable final product.  It’s great that, by virtue of continuing to push SB 840 and not backing down, Sen. Kuehl will be in that room for those negotiations.  So this is not a fool’s errand, it’s a vital step to continue to push this state toward universal single payer healthcare and show the nation that it can be done.

On the flip for more legislative news…

In other news that really warms my heart, Sen. Gloria Romero’s SB 110, providing for an independent sentencing commission that will have the power to recommend sentencing guidelines, the TRUE way to reform our broken prison system, passed the State Senate.  Better yet, a companion bill passed the Assembly, so it looks like this sentencing commission proposal has a very good chance of winding up on the Governor’s desk.  Lou Correa again was the only Democratic Senator to vote against the bill.  I sense a pattern.  But it passed, and that’s spectacular news.  Hopefully the final bill will give the commission some teeth to actually mandate sentencing reform, and take the process out of the hands of “tough on crime” legislators.

And the Senate also voted to put the nonbinding Out of Iraq resolution on the February 2008 ballot.  I only really appreciate this in the sense that I’d love to see the Governor have to sign it.  Will he protect his party or “let the people decide?”  Other than that, I’m apathetic toward it, and I do believe it’s a stalking horse to get more Democrats to the polls in February, who may be more disposed to approving the term limits initiative that would allow the Democratic leadership to stay in office.

It’s well-known that Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata wasn’t particularly happy with the sellout prison construction bill that the Governor signed last week.  It’s also well-known that none of the “reforms” in that prison bill will do anything to lower the prison overcrowding rate before the fast-approaching deadline for the state to appear before a judge and prove that the situation has changed.  So Perata is using some old-fashioned arm-twisting to get some real reforms in the corrections system.

The Senate Democratic leader is urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to use his administrative power to change parole rules to ease severe prison crowding, possibly by as many as 8,100 inmates.

Senate President Pro Tempore Don Perata, D-Oakland, said Republican opposition kept parole reform out of a $7.8 billion plan to ease overcrowding through a building program and transferring some prisoners to other states.

Perata said speculation at the Capitol that the bill signed by the Republican governor last week includes an unwritten “side deal” to have Schwarzenegger bypass the Legislature and administratively enact parole changes is inaccurate.

“I wouldn’t call it a deal,” Perata said of talks with the governor. “What we said is we couldn’t put it in the bill because the Republicans wouldn’t support it.

“We said further that if you don’t do something with parole, you can’t make any of this work,” said Perata. “So you’ve got the ability to do it. It’s up to you to do it.”

Of course, I’d rather they tried to put this in the bill, dared the Republicans to block it, and then run on the consequences.  But clearly, Perata is trying to leverage the judicial deadline (which is the only reason anything got done on a prison bill in the first place) to bring about a saner policy.  I don’t like that the Democratic leadership appeared to cave on this policy and gave the Governor most of what he wanted; I personally think that, without real reform, they’ll have to do the same damn thing five years from now.  But at least Perata is trying to use the deadline to his advantage, after it was used to his detriment previously. 

Perhaps Perata could get Mike Jimenez of the CCPOA, who’s disinclined to the Governor’s plan, to join him in calling for parole reform.  And he should go further and introduce Sen. Romero’s legislation for an independent sentencing commission.  But this is making the best of a bad situation.

The State Legislature decided to run away from hard choices and add brick and mortar to simply delay our prison crisis without addressing root causes.

Legislative leaders brokered a deal Wednesday to add 53,000 beds to the state’s prison and jail systems while increasing rehabilitation opportunities for inmates with added drug treatment, vocational and education programs.

The $7.4 billion agreement to help ease California’s severe prison overcrowding contained no provisions for any early releases of inmates.

At the same time, it did not include any changes to the state’s parole or sentencing systems. And it drew heavy criticism from the prison system’s two largest public employee unions over a provision that would allow the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to transfer 8,000 inmates out of state in a program now on hold in the appellate courts.

The transferring 8,000 inmates part won’t get through the courts.  And holding firm on sentencing and parole is lunacy, absolute lunacy.  It just means that we’ll all be back here in 5 years.  Meanwhile construction money will be doled out and more nonviolent offenders will be locked up.  And the “increasing rehabilitation opportunities”?  Lip service.

over…

What does the proposal by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, Senate leader Don Perata, Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines and Senate GOP leader Dick Ackerman say about rehabilitation?

According to some prison advocates, not much. In addition to $7.4 billion in spending to build new jails and prisons, it would allocate just $50 million in the first year on substance abuse, education and mental health services. The system currently has about 170,000 prisoners, and a recidivism rate close to 70%.

That’s a crime.  This state government won’t even fully fund Prop. 36, passed by voters to move drug offenders into treatment centers and not prisons.  We have 94 year-old men in walkers who have been rejected for parole six times.  And now there’s a prison “solution” that is notable only for its cowardice, its refusal to address sentencing guidelines and its big talk on rehabilitation without action.  More beds is not the answer; it’s embarrassingly obvious.
A couple good Democrats had some sense, but were not backed up by their leaders:

While Republican lawmakers hailed the agreement, enthusiasm was more muted among Democratic lawmakers, many of whom declined to comment. Two sources familiar with a meeting Wednesday evening among Senate Democrats said that state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, a leading advocate in the Legislature of prison reform, had criticized the plan at the meeting.

State Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, noted the deal “will mark more growth for the prison industry.”

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, said policymakers had no choice but to increase the size of the prison system.

“This is a compromise among bad alternatives,” Perata said. “Now we vote and light candles. That’s a reference to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.”

Are you kidding me?  Apparently the Democrats aren’t in the majority in Sacramento.  I don’t know if you were aware of that.  But that’s what Perata is telling me by this statement.

It’s scandalous.  The political will to actually fix the prison crisis is nonexistent.  This capitulation to try to build our way out of it is fated not to work.  I’m disgusted by this absolute spinelessness.

This was surprising to me: grassroots action last week protesting the Governor’s prison policy.

Busloads of protesters fighting the construction of new penitentiaries swarmed the Capitol on Wednesday, while inside the statehouse, the simmering politics surrounding the prison overcrowding crisis boiled into full view.

The protesters attacked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to build 78,000 new prison and jail beds, saying that $11 billion worth of “bricks and mortar and debt” are no substitute for true reform.

Instead, the demonstrators – some dressed in orange prison jumpsuits and standing in makeshift cells – said lawmakers could quickly thin the inmate population by releasing geriatric and incapacitated convicts and by sanctioning thousands of parole violators in their communities rather than in state lockups.

I would add revising sentencing guidelines through a newly-created independent commission, but just the presence of these protesters at all suggests that this issue will not be as invisible as it has been in previous years.  Which makes sense, as we’re two months from a court-imposed deadline to do something about overcrowding.

over…

And good for Gloria Romero for stepping out on something that will win her no friends in the voting public, but is simply the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, political fireworks were flying over a decision by Senate Democrats to place a moratorium on bills that would lengthen criminal sentences and thereby exacerbate prison crowding.

The maneuver infuriated Republicans, but Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), chairwoman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, said it could not be “a business-as-usual year” in Sacramento given the overcrowding emergency.

“The Legislature bears a share of the responsibility for the crisis, and we must accept that,” Romero said. “We can’t keep having bills fly out of committee like pancakes just because we want to appear tough on crime.”

There have been over 1,000 such bills in the last 30 years.  They look good on glossy mailers and they can easily be used as a club to damage opponents.  But they have a major indirect impact on our quality of life.

And this mass incarceration is a symptom as well, a function of increasing inequality in the Bush years.  As the chasm between haves and have-nots grows, desperation leads to increased crime.  And then the imprisonment itself keeps the snowball rolling down the hill:

Imprisonment does more than reflect the divides of race and class. It deepens those divides-walling off the disadvantaged, especially unskilled black men, from the promise of American life. While violent criminals belong in jail, more than half of state and federal inmates are in for nonviolent crimes, especially selling drugs. Their long sentences deprive women of potential husbands, children of fathers, and convicts of a later chance at a decent job. Similar arguments have been made before, but Western, a Princeton sociologist, makes a quantitative case. Along the way, his revisionist account of the late 1990s detracts from its reputation as an era of good news for the poor…

The 1990s were said to be a time when rising tides finally did lift all boats. Western warns that part of the reason, statistically speaking, is that many poor men have been thrown overboard-the government omits prisoners when calculating unemployment and poverty rates. Add them in, as Western does, and joblessness swells. For young black men it grows by more than a third. For young black dropouts, the jobless rate leaps from 41 percent to 65 percent. “Only by counting the penal population do we see that fully two out of three young black male dropouts were not working at the height of the 1990s economic expansion,” Western warns. Count inmates and you also erase three quarters of the apparent progress in closing the wage gap between blacks and whites.

The increased recidivism rate and the drive to incarcerate more and more for longer and longer walls off opportunity to families on the wrong side of the race and class divide.  Prison policy is job policy, poverty policy, family policy, education policy, and so on.  It took a massive crisis to get anyone to focus on it, but I hope that in the future, we can understand it in these terms.

Looks like California is about to lose a bunch of money:

A judge Tuesday threw out Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to transfer thousands of inmates to other states to relieve prison overcrowding. Schwarzenegger said he would immediately appeal, saying dangerous convicts might otherwise have to be released early.

The governor invoked emergency powers in October when he ordered the Corrections Department to send thousands of inmates to private prisons in other states. Two employee unions, including the one representing guards, filed lawsuits alleging the order violated state law.

Superior Court Judge Gail Ohanesian agreed with the unions, saying that while prison overcrowding is dangerous, “this is not the type of circumstance generally covered by the Emergency Services Act.”

The “emergency” Schwarzenegger is talking about is really an emergency of not being able to fill beds in private for-profit prisons for which the state has already paid.  The state couldn’t sweet-talk several thousand prisoners into voluntarily leaving (even with the infomercial-style “Come for the bigger cells; stay for the gourmet meals!” videos used to entice them), so Arnold tried to force them out.  Of course, that’s illegal.  Not that he cares, and we see what the tactic is in his statement: he wants to fearmonger judges into letting him break the law.

flip…

“Today’s disappointing ruling is a threat to public safety,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “I will not release dangerous criminals to relieve overcrowding. The transfer of inmates is imperative to relieve the pressure on our overburdened prison system.”

Besides violating the emergency act, Schwarzenegger’s move violated a ban in the California Constitution on using private companies for jobs usually performed by state workers, the judge ruled.

It’s a standard Republican tactic of privatizing everything, rewarding the prison-industrial complex (in this case) with cash for chattel.

The plan was a think-small approach anyway – try to outsource a problem without addressing root causes, all the while knowing that we’ll be right back at the same place addressing the same problem in a matter of years.  Schwarzenegger’s political cowardice, his unwillingness to spend any political capital against the “law-n-order” crowd and do what actually needs to be done to fix the prison system (by changing sentencing guidelines and foregrounding rehabilitation and treatment, instead of cutting drug-treatment programs like he does in his budget), reflects a total deficit of leadership.

UPDATE: The brilliance of our prison system:

LANCASTER, Calif. – California’s ban on tobacco in prisons has ignited a burgeoning black market behind bars, where a pack of smokes can fetch up to $125.

Prison officials who already have their hands full keeping drugs and weapons away from inmates now are spending time tracking down tobacco smugglers, some of whom are guards and other prison employees. Fights over tobacco have erupted: at one Northern California prison, guards had to use pepper spray to break up a brawl among 30 inmates […]

Sometimes, family and friends are able to secretly pass it to inmates during visits. Other times, inmates assigned to work crews off prison grounds arrange for cohorts outside the prison to leave stashes of tobacco at prearranged drop sites, then smuggle it behind bars.

A less-risky method: culling small amounts of tobacco from cigarette butts found along roadsides and other work sites […]

“It’s almost becoming a better market than drugs,” said Devan Hawkes, an anti-gang officer at Pelican Bay. “A lot of people are trying to make money.”

172,000 prisoners for 100,000 beds, a 70% recidivism rate, and we’re fighting the War on Tobacco.  And making a rich and dangerous black market.

Unbelievable.

Last week a nonpartisan commission released a disheartening report about the state of California prisons, arguing that decades of “tough on crime” actions by politicians have caused an intractable crisis, with an alarming lack of capacity, the worst recidivism rate in the nation, and a charged atmosphere in state lockups which cause major riots and gang activity.

If policymakers are unwilling to make bold changes, the commission said, they should appoint an independent entity – modeled after the federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission – with the power to do it for them.

“For decades, governors and lawmakers fearful of appearing soft on crime have failed to muster the political will to address the looming crisis,” the commission said.

“And now their time has run out.”

It is clearly time for bold action to relieve the prison crisis, so the Governor took some, though bold may be the only charitable thing you can ssay about it.  More like brazen:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Friday that his administration would forcibly shift thousands of inmates to out-of-state prisons because only a few hundred had volunteered to leave […]

Between 5,000 and 7,000 inmates will be forcibly moved, said Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary James Tilton. The first to go will be inmates scheduled for deportation after they’ve served their sentences and those who get few visitors.

The reaction to the plan broke down along party lines, with Republicans portraying the same “tough on crime” pose that got us in this mess in the first place.

Republican lawmakers welcomed Schwarzenegger’s decision, calling it overdue.

“We are out of options,” said Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Orange), who chairs a committee examining prison operations. “This is prison, these are prisoners, and they don’t get to say where they’re going to do their time.”

Democratic lawmakers, advocates for inmates and the prison guards’ union attacked the transfers as illegal and irresponsible.

“I think it’s pathetic policy,” said Steve Fama, staff attorney with the Prison Law Office, which represents prisoners. “Because the elected officials don’t have the will to figure out how to solve the crisis, we instead export convicts and spread our mess across the land.”

On the flip…

Assemblyman Spitzer doesn’t seem to understand state law, because an inmate’s consent is required before moving them out of state.  This is why the Governor unleashed a charm offensive to entice prisoners to move, showing them infomercial-like videos about the great amenities and tasty food at their new home.  This persuaded a whopping 300 or so prisoners to consent to move, far less than needed.  So he just ordered a forced exile.

Now, the problem for Schwarzenegger is that he already has a contract in place with privately run prisons for them to take these inmates off the state’s hands.  So if he doesn’t fill the beds, the state is out a lot of money.  Ultimately that’s what this comes down to, in addition to a feeble attempt to shift the problem by shipping it out of state.

This shows to me that the root causes of our prison crisis are still being ignored.  If you want to really know why we’re at twice our capacity in state lockups, read this.

Defense attorneys are protesting a drug crackdown on skid row, saying petty narcotics users are increasingly being sent to prison instead of receiving treatment that could cure their addictions.

Since September, police and prosecutors have targeted drug dealing in the 5th Street corridor – an area bordered by 4th and 6th streets, Broadway and Central Avenue – which police said was a hotspot of drug crimes.

Though law enforcement officials have hailed the effort, defense lawyers say it is harming some who need help.

“They’re basically cleaning out skid row by putting people into state prison, where there really isn’t room … either,” said Deputy Public Defender Lisa Lichtenstein, who handles numerous downtown drug cases.

She said that since the fall, minor drug cases that in the past might have resulted in possession charges that could lead to treatment have been prosecuted as drug sales, which can result in prison sentences for those convicted.

In many cases, Lichtenstein said, the drug sales charges are against addicts selling a small amount to pay for their own habit. “These are very small amounts of drugs, 10 dollars’ worth, maybe $20,” she said.

So nonviolent offenders who desperately need medical treatment are being hauled off to overflowing jails in order to make downtown Los Angeles safe for loft development (even though the loft market is flatlining downtown).  They can’t fit in the jails, so the solution agreed upon is to export the problem.  This doesn’t address future needs, as 6 or 9 months down the road another batch of prisoners will need to be outsourced.  And so human beings are sold, actually literally sold to private for-profit prisons if you think about it, and the cycle which propagated this crisis goes unbroken.

I want you to read some of a letter posted at the great liberal blog Orcinus.  Sara Robinson’s brother is in a California prison as we speak, and the conditions are… well just read it.

We are on lockdown status — all of us. There was an incident in the hall outside my cell. An inmate was cut up pretty bad and nearly died out right in front of us. He was just left laying there for too long before help was summoned.

That was Wednesday. The investigation doesn’t start until Monday, and lockdown will continue until they get a name. It’s a very timely incident: COs [correction officers] get hazard pay until it is resolved. This close to the holidays, it only makes sense to put off the investigation as long as possible […]

Another scam is the library. No, I don’t get “points” [toward release or better conditions] for contributing to it — I only feed the machine. Upon checking out a book, you sign a trust release for the amount of the book. These are processed every week. When a book isn’t returned in seven days, you are charged for its full cost.

But availability to the library is only given every TWO weeks. I didn’t know this, until I was charged for two. Both books were turned in at the next available date — but too late to avoid paying for them. This way, one book will pay for itself over and over.

By the way, these books are ALL donated by inmates.

I was also charged for two T-shirts. I received them sleeveless, and was charged for destruction of state property. They’ll go back to the laundry, and be re-issued to another inmate, who will be charged for them, too — as was the person who got them before me. The shirts have cost me $15 apiece so far. They were made by inmates in Prison Industry Authority jobs.

As they say, read the whole thing.  The corrections process is broken in so very many ways, and the emphasis almost seems to be on dehumanizing prisoners, virtually ensuring their return after they get out.  Many come in on victimless crimes and come back again and again.  And they’re treated completely inhumanely, and now shipped away from their homes.

It’s not “sexy” to give a damn about prisoners; just look at that quote from Assemblyman Spitzer for proof.  But this is a serious problem that speaks to our humanity and our dignity.  What we’ve done is to practically create a second-tiered culture in California, one which is growing at a faster rate than can be managed.  The Democrats in the Legislature need to embrace the Little Hoover Commission Report, stop this forced emigration proposal, and come up with a same set of policies that rewards rehabilitation and treatment and understands the goals of incarceration, which are not to let people rot but to ensure that they pay their debt to society and move on.

We always like to talk about how a strong Democratic Party needs to be unwavering on specific issues to let the electorate understand the core concerns of the party and attract people to the brand.  This is no less true in California, where the Democratic brand is somewhat invisible (better than the Republican brand, which is shot).  This is a bold move on sentencing guidelines, and those who are supporting it are probably going to catch hell from the law-n-order crowd, but it’s important to plant the flag for sane sentencing so that we don’t turn massive percentages of the state into an unmanageable prison population.

Launching what promises to be one of the year’s fiercest debates in the Capitol, the Senate’s top Democrats on Thursday moved toward reforming California’s byzantine criminal sentencing system.

Unveiling legislation to create a sentencing review commission, Senate leader Don Perata of Oakland and Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles said California should join 16 other states now revisiting the question of who goes to prison and for how long.

The lawmakers also urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to use his executive powers to create an interim working group that would begin collecting and analyzing sentencing data as early as February.

“We can’t wait,” Romero said, noting that prison overcrowding is so severe that federal judges may impose a cap on the inmate population, now at 172,000. “Public safety is not served with a broken corrections system.”

more…

Schwarzenegger has already proposed a sentencing commission, but asked them to spend their first year looking at parole guidelines, which would have no effect on the prison population in a time of crisis.  He’s constrained by a base that already hates him, who would view loosening sentencing restrictions as a final betrayal.  Democrats have little to gain from this proposal other than moving the state forward.  Surely it plays into the ridiculous stereotype conservatives hold of liberals as coddlers of criminals.  But the fact remains that the present system is incredibly dangerous, and Democrats in the legislature are being the grownups here by trying to do something about it.  Not just TALKING about it, like the Governor, but taking it out of the realm of politics and into a solutions-based environment.  There’s a rapidly approaching deadline where a federal judge will start capping the number of people in prison.  If something bold like this isn’t done, you’re going to see inmates let out of prisons in droves, and that STILL won’t solve the long-term structural problem.  Republicans want to live in this fantasy world where they can one-up each other on being “tough on crime” as if there are no real-world consequences.

In California, many experts have urged an overhaul of the sentencing system, calling it chaotic, unwieldy and complex. The nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission, which is poised to release a report on sentencing reform, found that California has added more than 1,000 laws and sentence enhancements – lengthening prison terms – over the last 30 years. Most of the changes were made by the Legislature, though some came through ballot initiatives such as the three-strikes measure of 1994.

Some critics say the state’s fixed-term sentencing system should be altered because it compels the release of inmates regardless of whether they are rehabilitated. Under such a system, there is no incentive for felons to change their lives, some scholars say.

Other experts say the biggest problem in California is a lack of uniformity, with felons convicted of the same crime receiving different sentences in different counties.

“The system we have now is a hodgepodge, and we need independent experts to help us put some sense into it,” Perata said. “Whether the Legislature has the political will to do that is another question. I’m skeptical.”

The reductio ad absurdum of this “tough on crime” pose is this shocking report from CPR about forced sterilization (you heard me right) in the prisons:

Given California’s shameful history with the forced sterilizations of thousands of people during the 20th century, you would think that bureaucrats would think twice before suggesting that the sterilization of an imprisoned woman could ever be freely chosen. And you would be wrong.

“Doing what is medically necessary” is how the Gender Responsiveness Strategies Commission of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation termed its July 18 recommendation to consider providing, in the course of delivering a baby, “elective” sterilization of women who give birth in prison, “either post-partum or coinciding with cesarean section.”

To describe a sterilization performed under such circumstances as voluntary is absurd. One’s ability to consent to sterilization, or anything else, during pregnancy and labor is limited in any setting, not to mention in a coercive environment such as a prison. Moreover, Robert Sillen, whom U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson appointed last year as federal receiver over California’ s prison health-care system, has documented that a person dies each day in California prisons due to gross medical neglect. How, in such an environment, could we trust prison staff to ensure informed consent to such a procedure?

It’s absolutely revolting, and it’s what you get when you have this dehumanization of criminals, a lack of emphasis on treatment and rehabilitation, and a political environment where conservative frames on law enforcement are the only ones accepted as “serious.”

As this crisis reaches a point of no return, it’s not enough to just talk about blurring the lines on partisanship.  You have to take a stand to do something about it.  I have not been thrilled with the legislature’s performance out of the gate on health care (save for the great Sheila Kuehl).  Their response to this crisis has been solid, however, and taking stands like this will eventually resonate with the public as long as they’re able to get out the message.  I don’t think the state’s citizens are as conservative as law enforcement policy suggests.  It’s time to take back this issue, and call for sanity, call for determining consequences before action, and call for lifting up those who transgress, rather than trying to lock the problem away.

I have to say that I don’t understand the outrage generated by this story about California prison guards earning massive amounts of overtime.  I guess it ties into the conservative culture of victimhood and the belief that someone’s always scheming to steal from them.

Here’s the deal.  Prison guards are getting a lot of overtime because they’re working a ton of hours.  Overtime is DESIGNED to increase exponentially with more hours worked.  The reason they’re working so much is that, a) inmates are stuffed into common areas where they need to be watched more closely than if they were all locked away in cells, and b) there aren’t enough guards for this extra workload.  The overtime isn’t “out of control,” as the President of the astroturf-like “National Tax Limitation Committee” said in the article; the prison system is out of control.  Would you rather there be no guards?  Would you rather everyone worked 40 hours a week and there was nobody on the job in common areas at night?

more on the flip…

The director of prisons is exactly right.

While relatively few officers are required to guard inmates housed in cells, far more are needed to watch those housed in gymnasiums and other areas not meant for sleeping, said Scott Kernan, acting director of adult prisons.

“Population is the biggest driving force” in the soaring overtime, Kernan said.

Corrections officers have a difficult job, made all the more difficult by overcrowding, gang warfare, a complete lack of health care which angers the prison population, and having to work all this overtime, which wears on anyone.  This isn’t a case of lucky-duckies living off the fat of the taxpayer.  There aren’t enough corrections officers, bottom line.  And if you want to blame somebody, blame whatever idiot thought this was a good idea:

(executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. Chuck) Alexander said the state could reduce overtime by hiring as many as 4,000 people to fill vacancies.

He blamed the guard shortage on a decision to shut the academy for new recruits for eight months in 2004.

At that time, the prison population had dipped, and some officials believed the decline would continue.

The drop turned out to be temporary.

Attorney Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, which is suing the state over prison crowding, agreed that the decision to shut the academy was a “mistake.”

“They don’t have enough officers to safely man the prisons,” Specter said.

I guarantee you that the Governor’s office was responsible for that stupidity.  “Hey, the population dipped for one year, let’s close the academy down!”  Brilliant!  It cuts costs, and fits a pattern of wishes turning into policy.  If we just BELIEVE that the prison population will go down some more, surely it will, right?

Meanwhile, the LA Times article from which this all comes flat-out lied about the Governor’s new plan, saying it focuses equally on building new facilities, rehabilitation and changing sentencing guidelines, while most of the money goes to building, little to rehab, and the only sentencing guidelines that will be reviewed in the first year will be parole sentences.

Gray Davis gave a very bloated contract to the prison guards’ union in exchange for campaign support, the results of which are being felt now.  Indeed it looks clear that Governor Schwarzenegger gave in to the guards’ union on whatever they wanted in an election year, and that wasn’t even enough to earn their support.  But let’s not demonize the corrections officers themselves for having to deal with a crisis that is not of their own design.