In case you hadn’t noticed, we are pretty much at the moment of perfect storm for the prisons.  They are wildly overcrowded, and generally wild. They are the subject of Supreme litigation to release 40,000 prisoners. They are costing us more than we are spending on our higher education systems, and oh, yeah, there’s the fact that we face about $30 Billion of debt.

So you would think that this would be a super fantastic opportunity to try to do something about the prison situation.  For years, the voters and politicians of the state have been scared of doing anything other than trading on fear.  Rather than working on new solutions was considered too risky.  Thing is, while I was working for Kamala Harris’ campaign, I learned that somebody forgot to tell her that.  Instead, she has throughout her career as SF DA been willing to look at new ways to make this a safer world, rather than just the politically safe ways of locking up every offender and trying to keep the keys far away.

And perhaps we are seeing more Californians noticing that we, in fact, have a few problems here.  From today’s LA Times:

“Smart on Crime” is something of a Harris franchise, the name of her 2009 book. In it, and during her campaign, Harris argued that criminal justice money is wasted on the “revolving door” that prison has become as 70% of the 120,000 convicts released annually end up being caught committing new crimes.

She believes that prison should be the punishment for serious offenders and that greater pains should be taken to prod milder offenders with education, counseling, probation and other community-based support.

“I firmly believe in and advocate accountability and consequences when you are talking about rapists and murderers and child molesters – you’ve got to lock them up,” she said. “But you’ve also got to look at the fact that crime is not monolithic.” (LA Times)

However, we can’t really think that whatever changes are going to be either quick or easy.  At the same time this story (entitled “The time may be right for Kamala Harris”) was published, we get a story of Jerry Brown’s fealty to the prison guards union (CCPOA).

Jerry Brown is preparing to dance with the ones who brung him, specifically 31,000 members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. … In a speech that was closed to the public, Brown warned union members that there may not be much if any pay raise. But he also talked about his strong relationship with the union’s leaders and declared that he intends to work out a labor pact with them once in office.

“He reached out to a large segment of his employees and gave them hope,” said Chuck Alexander, the union’s second in command. “It made people feel a little bit better.”(SacBee)

CCPOA has been in a near constant war with Schwarzenegger. It occasionally was helpful, but more often what they were fighting was any attempt at reform. The target of their ire was sentencing reform primarily, as they would prefer to keep more people in prisons (and more guards in jobs).  The relationship with Brown will certainly be different. That’s probably a good think initially, but CCPOA is going to have to open up to reforms, or face some far more drastic options.

The court decision is still looming, but even a “victory” would only be a temporary for our prison and its history of letting people die in their own cesspools.  Everybody is going to need to make some changes in their thinking if we are to really tackle the prisons issue.  CCPOA is going to have to open up to reform.  Politicians, particularly Harris and Brown, are going to have to get really friendly with that third rail in order to provide the leadership our state needs.  And most importantly, our voters have to realize that their is a high cost of the “tough on crime” mantras, especially when not backed up with sensible rehabilitation procedures.

Big change is coming, but whether its delivered through democratic processes, through a court order, or some sort of disaster, well, who knows?

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.

Nearly 7 out of 10 prisoners is destined to return to prison after being released.  Yet, when the chopping block returns, it is the programs that can go to reduce these figures that are the first to go from the prison budget.  Take this report from California Watch showing that prisoners don’t have access to education:

Fewer than one in every ten California inmates are enrolled in an educational program, despite a pledge by state officials to enhance rehabilitation efforts in order to cut recidivism and relieve prison overcrowding. An estimated 14,360 inmates were taking part in a variety of academic classes out of a total adult inmate population of 162,608, according to a report [PDF] released last week by the California Rehabilitation Oversight Board.

The bigger problem is that it seems that some seats for potential students are even going unused.  Meanwhile, education at the UC and CSU systems gets more expensive every year.  The way we reduce our expenditures on prisons isn’t to cut anti-recidivism programs, it is too make sure that they work and that prisoners are using them.

(I want to welcome SF’s District Attorney Kamala Harris. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

States across our country are facing budget deficits. California is projected to begin next fiscal year with a deficit of nearly 25 billion dollars, equaling one fourth of the state’s entire general fund. Over 10 billion of that general fund supports corrections and law enforcement. In this fiscal crisis, there is no denying the facts: tough budget times are here for public safety agencies. As the District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco, I am personally familiar with the difficult circumstances we face. Without a significant shift in local and state practices, we can predict that shrinking law enforcement and corrections funding will result in higher crime rates, less support for victims, and fewer offenders being held accountable. If ever there was a time to think outside the box and break with the failed approaches of the past, the time is now. We need to do something different.

In San Francisco, I have developed a smart on crime approach: we must be tough on serious and violent offenders while we get just as tough on the root causes of crime. In my office, we have raised felony conviction rates and sent more violent offenders to state prison, at the same time we have launched innovative, cost effective approaches to reduce recidivism, truancy, and childhood trauma. With a genuine investment in breaking cycles of crime, we can improve public safety at the same time that we save precious public resources.

EDIT by Brian: See the flip

Reentry: Why it Matters to Law Enforcement

Over the last thirty years, our prison population has soared. In 1980, California had a prison population of about 24,000 in a state of 24 million. Today we have an inmate population of 172,000 out of 36 million people. This means that since 1980, our population has grown by 50 % while our prison population has grown 617%.

Today, the majority of those inmates are not first-time offenders. Each year, approximately 70 percent of those released from California prisons commit another offense, resulting in the highest recidivism rate in the nation. These repeat offenses are preventable crimes that claim more victims and harm communities’ quality of life. It costs an estimated $10,000 to prosecute just one felony case, and about $47,000 per year to house just one inmate in prison. Every time an inmate is released and commits a new crime, local and state jurisdictions pay those costs over and over again.  To keep our communities safe and use public money wisely, we must ensure that people coming out of the criminal justice system become productive citizens and stay out.

Four years ago my office pioneered a model reentry initiative called "Back on Track" to reduce recidivism among nonviolent offenders. Back on Track combines accountability with opportunity to ensure that first-time nonviolent drug offenders are held accountable, stop committing crime and become self-sufficient. In Back on Track, offenders plead guilty and commit to strict court supervision as they complete an intensive personal responsibility program. They get trained for a job, go back to school, get current with child support, enroll in parenting classes, and become positive contributors in their communities. The program encompasses swift sanctions for making bad choices and clear incentives for good ones. As a result, less than 10 percent of Back on Track graduates have re-offended compared to a 54 percent recidivism rate statewide for the same population of offenders. We have achieved this success at a fraction of the cost of traditional corrections approaches. Back on Track costs about $5,000 annually per participant, compared to $35,000 to 47,000 for jail or prison.

To graduate, Back on Track participants must be employed or in school. The program has been selected as a national model by the National District Attorney’s Association and at least two jurisdictions have replicated the initiative. Back on Track demonstrates that preventing recidivism is both viable and cost-effective.

Truancy: Keeping Children in School Means Keeping Our Streets Safe

In 2007, after another year of high homicide rates in San Francisco, I asked my staff to review the victims’ histories to assess trends. We found that over the prior four years, 94% of homicide victims under the age of 25 were high school drop outs. We then reviewed SF public schools data and found that over 5,000 students were habitually or chronically truant each year, and nearly half of those kids were in elementary school. These are the kids on route to becoming high school drop outs.

In response, I joined with the San Francisco Unified School District to launch a citywide truancy initiative focused on getting elementary and middle school kids back in school. As the city’s chief prosecutor, I sent every parent in the district a letter explaining that I was prepared to prosecute parents if they broke the law by keeping their children out of school. I was surprised to discover that many parents didn’t know that California law makes education mandatory for children under the age of 18. Thousands of parents attended informational meetings on truancy after receiving the letter, and we fielded hundreds of calls from parents who had questions or needed help.

We also held face-to-face "D.A. Mediation" meetings with over 2,000 parents. Suddenly, the principals didn’t need to work so hard to convince parents to take seriously the consequences of keeping their child from school because a prosecutor was in the room. Through these mediations, we met parents in need of help to get their kids in school. One mother of three, for example, was homeless and holding down two jobs. We connected her to services so she could do what she wanted to do – be a good mother and put her children in school.

Mediations resulted in significant progress for most of the parents. Still, some continued to fail. In these cases, my office filed criminal charges. The children of these parents, some as young as six years old, had missed as many as 80 days of school out of a 180 day school year. Once we filed criminal charges, things started to change. Those parents report to a Truancy Court that combines consequences and support services to make sure that parents get their children in school.

Since we started this initiative, truancy rates for elementary school kids in San Francisco have dropped by 23 percent. And it did not take millions of dollars, bureaucratic red tape, or a decade to see results. It only took genuine commitment and a willingness to shake up the status quo.

What starts out as chronic truancy makes a child far more likely to end up dropping out of school, becoming a victim, or getting arrested. Taking swift corrective action now will reduce the likelihood of harmful and costly consequences later.

Childhood Trauma: Breaking the Silence to Help Children and Youth  

Last year in San Francisco, a teenage boy was gunned down while waiting outside a school for a ride. His senseless murder was witnessed by dozens of young students who were outside at the time. Months later, many of these youth had not accessed mental health support to recover from what they saw. Worse still, for some, it was likely not the first time they had witnessed violence. Some young people come from homes where violence is the norm, while others see violence in their neighborhoods far too frequently. The impact of repeated exposure to violence on children is enormous: they can’t concentrate in school, they’re detached, or they act-up and misbehave.

Like soldiers at war, children are highly likely to suffer from trauma from repeated exposure to violence. And like soldiers coming home, they often suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Unfortunately, many of these children go undiagnosed or are misdiagnosed and thereby not treated appropriately. Worse still, children repeatedly traumatized by violence at an early age are more likely to fall through the cracks and become either victims or perpetrators of violence later in life.

Studies have shown that up to 35 percent of children and youth exposed to community violence develop PTSD. Exposure to community violence affects everything from a child’s sleep, to their school success, to the physical development of their brains.

In the District Attorney’s Office, we often see the needs of children from distressed families or neighborhoods go untreated. To address these unmet needs, last year we joined with California State Senator Mark Leno to craft ground-breaking legislation to provide funding for mental health counseling for traumatized children and youth. Signed into law last year, our bill allows children who witness community violence to access up to $5,000 for therapy and mental health support.

When we look at children growing up in tough environments, we need to see them through a prism instead of a plate glass window. Left unaddressed, their complex and difficult surroundings can overwhelm their minds and harm their chances for future success. If we can recognize their needs and get timely help, we can substantially increase life prospects for these children before it’s too late.

What Needs to Happen Can Happen

These are just a few examples of what can be done to improve public safety and break the cycle of crime. Being smart on crime requires changing our thinking. Albert Einstein once said, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." The State of California is at an economic crossroads that demands new approaches. I am confident that we can meet that demand through a long-term strategy of responsive, preventative and evidence-based "smart on crime" approaches, thereby ensuring a better and safer future for all of us.

This post was initially published at ACSblog: http://www.acslaw.org/node/13582