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.

So the Governor’s borrow-and-build solution to the current prison crisis yielded a surprising couple of paragraphs from the chief Democratic legislator on the committee that would oversee it.  I don’t know what to make of Gloria Romero’s statement:

Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), a longtime advocate of expanded rehabilitation programs in the state prison system and chairwoman of a legislative committee that oversees corrections, stood with the governor as he unveiled his proposal. Romero said she was optimistic that Schwarzenegger’s plan would help foster the kind of reforms she seeks.

“We have historically paid little attention to what happens after [inmates] get that $200 and the bus ticket out,” she said. “We will never merely build ourselves out of this problem.”

Little of the new spending the governor is proposing would be used for rehabilitation.

Why exactly is she rolling over on this one?  The proposal accomplishes the opposite of her goals.

In fact, it devotes most of its spending to more beds, and not rehabilitation and reform.  In addition, the Governor will set up a 17-member sentencing commission consisting of the Attorney General, legislators, citizens groups, the corrections secretary and a judge.  Their ostensible directive is to review sentencing guidelines, but the Governor has already made clear that three-strikes is off the table, and look what they’ll be spending their time on in the midst of a time where we may face a cap on inmates:

Commissioners would spend their first year examining whether the state’s mandatory three-year parole period could be safely shortened for some ex-convicts. The governor is also proposing an $11 billion building program to add space for thousands of additional inmates and changes to the state parole system.

Shouldn’t we be looking at the sentences of the people actually GOING TO JAIL to solve the problem of too many people in jail?  Wouldn’t that be the smart thing to do in the first year?

I still believe that you will not build your way into a solution on prison reform, and any proposal that primarily borrows money to sink it into more brick and mortar ends up making some people rich, more people incarcerated, and the same problem in five years.  The recidivism rate in California is 70%, the worst in the nation.  The Governor described this as “unacceptable” but gave no step to actually reducing that rate other than giving the recidivists a better place to sleep when they come back.