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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Chris Kelly, Democratic candidate for California Attorney General

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has been called a lot of things, but never a leader in criminal justice reform. Yet, last week the CDCR took a positive step towards dealing with our broken and excessively costly prisons system while Assembly Members continued to run in circles. It seems the Assembly has set the bar for leadership so low, even the CDCR has met it.

Last Thursday, the CDCR announced it would close the largest youth prison in California, Herman G. Stark, largely regarded as one of the worst of the six remaining costly state run youth prisons.  Given the 75% recidivism rate of youth leaving these institutions, closing the youth prisons and diverting youth to the local level is one of the real reforms our coalition has called for to improve public safety and end wasteful prison spending. As part of the People’s Budget Fix, we have proposed keeping young offenders at the local level, closing all six of the costly and ineffective youth prisons, and diverting half of the budget currently spent on these prisons to local programs. If fully implemented, this reform would save $200 million a year.

Closing the largest youth prison is an excellent start which will save $30-40 million by the CDCR’s estimate. But we’ll need to do more if we’re going to come up with $1.2 billion in savings. The need for action could not be more urgent: we must find those savings in the Corrections’ budget to avoid more draconian cuts to education, health care and other public safety programs like domestic violence shelters and drug treatment programs.

Moreover, most Californians agree we need to cut wasteful prison spending. Polls show that most Californians think we should cut the Corrections budget and we should protect funding for education. Most Californians also agree that state prison should be reserved for people who commit violent offenses, not petty ones.

Yet, the Assembly cannot agree on what seems like common sense to the rest of us: people who commit low-level crimes like petty theft and simple drug possession should be held accountable on the local level, not in prison cells at a cost of nearly $50,000 per person per year. It shocks the conscience that Assembly Members were willing to vote for billions of dollars of cuts to education-the most important program to average Californians-but are afraid to cut wasteful prison spending by even a fraction of that.  

Even if the Assembly passes its compromise bill this week, the CDCR and the Governor will have to come up with another nearly $1 billion in cuts. How? Without legislative action, the options for the CDCR and the Governor narrow, but they do have options. For example:

• Keep all young offenders local: The CDCR should close the five other youth prisons and divert all young offenders to local facilities and programs, to achieve the full savings of $1 billion in five years.

• Convert death sentences: The Governor should convert all death sentences to permanent imprisonment putting an end to the costly charade of capital punishment in California and saving $1 billion in five years.

• Expand alternative sanctions for technical violations of parole: In response to some technical violations by low-risk parolees, the CDCR should expand use of non-incarceration sanctions, including more intensive supervision, drug treatment and vocational training. In five years, net savings could surpass $1 billion.

Real reform of our criminal justice system will take years, not weeks. But it must start now. The reforms approved by the Senate and supported by the Governor and the CDCR should be easy for the Assembly to adopt. But if the Assembly doesn’t want to be part of the solution, than we should move on without them.

Natasha Minsker is death penalty policy director of the ACLU of Northern California. The People’s Budget Fix coalition includes the ACLU of Northern California, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Drug Policy Alliance, and Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes.

I don’t know what they’re drinking in the Assembly in Sacramento, but it’s not the coffee we’ve been offering.  Assembly members stumbled out of the chamber early Friday morning without voting on a bill that would reduce prison spending; a bill that is supported by the Republican Governor, the head of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and received an “aye” vote in the Senate on Thursday.  One of the sticking points in the Assembly: the idea that we might reduce some petty thefts to misdemeanors, rather than crimes that can result in a prison sentence when charged as a felony.

Really? Assembly Members are really voting against the bill because they think stealing a piece of pizza should get you a spot in California’s overwhelmed prison system at the price tag of $50,000 a year?  If that’s what they are thinking, they can’t be thinking straight. They must be under the influence of something, or more likely, some special interests. They are certainly not acting in the interest of public safety for the people of California.

The bill passed by the Senate is by no means perfect, but it’s an important first step in the right direction – it will only begin to get us close to the $1.2 billion in cuts needed from the prison budget and implement small but overdue criminal justice reforms.   In passing the bill, the Senate showed tremendous leadership and put healing California corrections and our public safety first.   Doubt is currently looming over whether our Assembly will match the Senate’s courage.  

If our Assembly Members insist on maintaining the status quo and gutting any real reform out of the bill, the people they will really be punishing are the people most in need: the children and the poor who depend on the state’s safety net. If we can’t make sensible reforms to save money in our corrections’ system, then more children will lose their health care, more teachers will be laid off, and more health and safety programs will be cut. Inevitably, we will have more people stealing more pizza and headed off to the only government program left: prison.

It’s time for our elected leaders to lead us out of this mess.

Natasha Minsker is the death penalty policy director for the ACLU of Northern California.

(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

(crossposted from Orange County Progressive)

In this context of a failing system, we asked Mike Farrell five questions on the subject of prison reform.

You’ve been an incredibly strong voice on capital punishment and prison reform, while America’s prison, including California’s massive incarceration system, are our great national shame. What specific steps should we be taking now to reform our prison system and the massive costs associated with it?

Well, first we should end the use of the death penalty. That will decapitate the system. I see the death penalty as the lid on the garbage can. Once we remove that lid, we’ll be forced to look into the rotten, stinking, maggot-infested mess that is our criminal justice system.

Next we should use the millions of dollars saved by the elimination of capital punishment to fund programs for crime victims as well as efforts that will cut the prison population, like drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, literacy programs, parenting programs, and child abuse prevention efforts.

Within the system we must create true rehabilitation programs (or as I think of them “habilitation” programs). Our prisons have become animal factories as a result of our focus on punishment and warehousing instead of recognizing and valuing the capacity for change in every person.

We should investigate and institute more alternatives to incarceration. Drug offenses should be recognized as a medical problem, not a criminal justice problem. Eliminating prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses would cut down our prison population by approximately one third.

Using parole properly would also cut down our prison population. Properly supervised parole, including more training and better pay for parole and probation officers, would be a big step in the right direction.

In short, incarcerating only those who truly need to be kept away from society and then using the best methods, medicine, training, psychological and therapeutic treatment and other resources available to us to bring them back to a level of humanity wherein they can become productive citizens.



You  wrote eloquently at Huffington Post about prison rape. How can we address this tragic issue when we have a prison system that’s overtaxed?

First we have to take the problem of rape in prison seriously. The federal government finally acknowledged the problem and put forward the prison rape elimination act (PREA), last year. Its existence is due to an organization originally known as ‘Stop Prisoner Rape.’ It has now evolved into Just Detention International. PREA is intended to deal with the phenomenon of prison rape, but little follow-through is evident.

And again, a less punitive, more humane attitude about those in prison would lead to a less tense and anxious population. But one of the primary things we can do is follow the example of some European countries and allow conjugal visits.

There’s a lot of noise about the use of torture by the Bush administration and a huge push for holding those involved accountable, as there should be. Why do you think that the atrocities that occur in our prisons on a daily basis don’t get as much attention or protest from progressives? And how can we change this?

There’s a great unwillingness to face the consequences of our having turned away from those who act out inappropriately. Ascribing “criminals” to a sub-human status allows people to ignore their responsibility to their fellow citizens and leave their treatment up

to “the experts.”

In part, this is due to the remaining vestiges of a puritan ethic; in part it is the result of men and women feeling overwhelmed by the need to provide for themselves and their children. And I believe it is in part a result of a lazy willingness to accept a double standard, a kind of domestic version of what is thought of internationally as “American exceptionalism,” the hypocrisy that believes that since we’re the “biggest and the best,” we don’t have to live by the same rules others do.

Simply stated, people have allowed themselves to be lulled into a kind of selfishness that directly contradicts the golden rule.



There is evidence that capital punishment doesn’t deter and that our justice system is not fool proof, meaning innocent lives are taken for crimes they did not commit. So how do we educate the public about capital punishment, not just as a failure to do what it intends to do but as a humanitarian issue?

As with every other important value, it will take a committed effort on the part of caring people to reach out to their families, friends, neighbors and beyond, pointing out the ugly realities associated with state killing. It’s important that we do not act as if our morality is higher than theirs, but simply appeal to their sense of decency. even one who truly believes that the state has a right to kill under certain circumstances can be brought, if he/she is honest, to an understanding that a system that is racist at its core, is only used against the poor, is rife with police and prosecutorial misconduct, is unfairly stacked against the accused, who, being disproportionately poor and ill-educated (almost all of whom will have a history of abuse), will receive a less-than-adequate defense by ill-prepared and/or overwhelmed defense attorneys, is, at base, not fair.

People want to be fair and they want to believe our systems are fair. When exposed as not only unfair, but also apt to capture and kill innocent people, the system begins to indict itself. (133 people have, to date, been charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to death and spent years awaiting the executioner, only to have finally been shown to be wrongfully convicted, then exonerated and freed. What we don’t know is how may innocent have gone to their deaths at the hands of the state.)

Another point that is gaining currency today, though it’s hard for some to understand because it is counter-intuitive, is that it costs more money to go through the process and kill someone than it does to have a simple, non-death penalty trial and maintain the guilty person in prison for the rest of his/her natural life.

The growing understanding of this last fact is one of the primary reasons the state of New Jersey became the first state in the modern era to do away with the death penalty in December of 2007. It also was a major consideration when the state of Mew Mexico became the second state to give up killing earlier this year.

The cost of capital punishment is causing a reconsideration of the system in many states today. Montana came within four votes of eliminating it this spring, Colorado came within one vote this month and both houses of the Connecticut legislature voted to end it last week. The bill is now on the governor’s desk.

Is there anyone in the California governor’s race for 2010 who is even making the right noises about prison reform and capital punishment?

I don’t know. I haven’t seen a sign of it. Jerry Brown was once a visionary who openly opposed capital punishment and had the courage to advocate thoughtful, humane, progressive ideas. He appears to have devolved into simply another politician.

In light of the projected $14 billion budget shortfall, Senate leader Don Perata said late yesterday “‘it would be imprudent and impolitic to support an expansion of health care’ before addressing the state’s budget deficit and its impact on existing programs.”

Meanwhile, Fabian Núñez is “so confident that we will be successful in reaching agreement that I have called for the Assembly to meet on Monday, December 17 in order to take up and pass AB 1X.”  So where are we actually heading on this?

Governor Schwarzenegger is calling for 10% spending cuts across the board in response to the budget shortfall that everyone knew was coming.  And as Dave points out, this means everyone who can’t afford to live without government gets screwed while the rich continue on their merry way.  It also means that next year’s budget fight will likely turn this year into the good ole days of budget wrangling.  And if Perata is serious about not passing anything as long as there’s a shortfall, then we ain’t passing anything for a while cause the shortfall isn’t going anywhere.

But before we even get to that, we find out whether all the extended sessions, coalition-shredding wars over an acceptable level of health-care (I’m looking at you Shum/Maviglio), time, money and both literal and cyber ink may end up coming to nothing because Don Perata can’t see spending on an important mandate when the political leadership in Sacramento can’t figure out how to balance a budget.

This is ultimately going to encapsulate most of the Calitics greatest hits from the past year; starting with health care, this runs through privatization, water usage, high speed rail and transportation, prison reform, Núñez pecadillos, labor relations, term limits, clean money, taxes, and the 2/3 rule.  Because it all runs back to the ability of people to get elected and pass a budget.

Most of all, it’s likely to reinforce the absurd lack of strong, public political leadership in this state.  There are no advocates.  Nobody has tried to convince me to sacrifice.  Nobody has tried to convince me of the inherent wisdom in a program that I might not otherwise think was a good idea.  The art of the possible is starting to discover that, as it turns out, not very much is possible with a $14 billion shortfall and no bold attempts at change.

Perata’s statement closed by saying “The real issue now is the deficit and how this squares with everything else that we are going to do.”  Everything is back up for debate.  Now that we’re staring at the very real possibility of getting less than we started with, it might not be such a bad time for a return to the fundamental principles of budgeting and state spending.  I’m not sure it could end up much worse.

From the Courage Campaign

California’s prisons are in a serious crisis.  California’s prisons are massively overcrowded, and more people are being sent there than ever before.  The conditions inside the prisons have deteriorated to the point that the health care system is already under the control of a federal court (three inmates died just this last December due to poor health care).  The courts have threatened to take over the rest of the system if urgent reforms are not implemented.  As Total Recall (the Courage Campaign governor watch) has noted, prison reform was a key part of Governor Schwarzenegger’s campaign promises both in the 2003 recall election and his 2006 reelection.  But Schwarzenegger took almost no action to fix our prisons in his first term as Governor, and he didn’t release a detailed plan to fix the problem until after his reelection, in December 2006.  Schwarzenegger’s first major prison bill has finally been signed, just this month.

More Prisons, And Billions More For Prisons

Nearly every expert agrees that sentencing reform – stopping the huge increases in the prison population – is desperately needed in California.  For Governor Schwarzenegger to fulfill his promise to fix our correctional system, he needs to provide bold leadership and resist the calls for “tough on crime.”  We simply cannot afford to send so many people to prison, and there’s no evidence that locking up 170,000 people (and the number keeps getting higher) has made us any safer.

Rather than enact bold reforms, on May 3, 2007, Schwarzenegger successfully pushed through a plan to build tens of thousands of new prison cells, which together with a few new treatment programs will rack up a cost of some 7.4 Billion Dollars.  Despite the rejection of voters, again and again, for bond dollars to build new prisons, the plan hailed as a success by Schwarzenegger spends more than 6 Billion just on construction alone — operating cost estimates will come later.  Schwarzenegger did not do what almost every expert on prisons has said he must do: institute immediate reform of the sentencing system to stop sending so many people to prison.  The 7.4 Billion Dollar plan does nothing to relieve the crisis in the immediate term.  Rather than a permanent fix to the broken system, this plan is a 7.4 Billion Dollar bandage.  Did I mention that the cost of this plan is 7.4 Billion Dollars?

Health Care for Inmates: Still Cruel and Unusual

The construction of new prisons is just the first part of the massive cost that we will have to pay to maintain a prison system housing 200,000 human beings.  Last week, the person appointed to fix the health care system in the prisons released his proposal to bring the system out of “cruel and unusual” territory.  The proposal had no price tag, but experts say it will take nearly 20 years and billions of dollars to fully implement.

Death Chamber Controversy

Adding a new dimension to Schwarzenegger’s prison failures is the recent controversy over a secret new death chamber at San Quentin prison.  Governor Schwarzenegger and his staff apparently knew of the plan to build this new chamber well before it was made public — but Schwarzenegger made statements to the contrary.  John Myers has an excellent description of the unfolding controversy here.

Total Recall

This series is dedicated to keeping you informed of how well Schwarzenegger’s actions live up to his promises.  We’ll keep you updated on developments as they happen.