{"id":10484,"date":"2009-11-13T16:22:02","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T16:22:02","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-11-13T16:22:02","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T16:22:02","slug":"revised-prison-plan-goes-to-federal-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/13\/revised-prison-plan-goes-to-federal-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Revised Prison Plan Goes to Federal Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last we heard from the prison situation, the three judge panel had told the state to do better<\/a> than their plan to reduce the population by 27,000.  Yesterday, the administration presented a plan to release the 40,000+ that the court had ordered, including some methods that the Legislature has previously rejected.<\/p>\n

The Schwarzenegger administration bowed to a federal court order Thursday and submitted a plan to reduce California’s prison population by more than 40,000 in two years, largely by sending fewer people to prison for relatively minor crimes and parole violations.<\/p>\n

Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate complied with the Thursday deadline set by a three-judge panel in San Francisco, while insisting that the court had no authority to order the population-reduction plan or to issue additional decrees necessary to make it work. The state has already served notice of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The plan includes several of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposals that the Legislature has already rejected: allowing some elderly or ailing prisoners to finish their sentences in local custody or home confinement; sending criminals to county jail instead of prison for crimes such as drug possession, receiving stolen property and writing bad checks; and raising the threshold for felony grand theft from $400 to $950.(SF Chronicle 11\/13\/09<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In theory, the Legislature has to approve some of these measures.  Depending on how the bill is presented, it could only need a majority. Which is good, because it seems highly unlikely that any Republicans would actually vote for raising the threshold for grand theft or reducing punishments on drug crimes as the plan calls for.<\/p>\n

And right on cue, Jim Nielsen talks tough:<\/p>\n

Plans to send fewer people to prison, such as the change in the threshold for grand theft, are “an egregious compromise of justice,” said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County). He said the state needs to build more prisons. (SF Chronicle<\/a>)
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, we could build and build and build, but unless we address the underlying cause of the problem, the revolving door of recidivism, we aren’t going to build our way out of the problem. Ignoring the fact that we don’t have the money to build the prisons, the fact that warehousing a substantial portion of the poor male demographic doesn’t create less criminality is the problem. Sen. Mark Leno points out solutions that are actually, you know, solutions, such as revising sentencing guidelines.<\/p>\n

While it always kind of shocks me to write this, California needs to look to states like Kansas<\/a> to find ways to reform our prison system. We need to change the focus of our prisons from simple punishment and warehousing into a broad focus on rehabilitation and getting these people back into productive society.  If we give up on these people, it is only the state that stands to lose as we pay $40,000 per yer to house each of these inmates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last we heard from the prison situation, the three judge panel had told the state to do better<\/a> than their plan to reduce the population by 27,000.  Yesterday, the administration presented a plan to release the 40,000+ that the court had ordered, including some methods that the Legislature has previously rejected.<\/p>\n

The Schwarzenegger administration bowed to a federal court order Thursday and submitted a plan to reduce California’s prison population by more than 40,000 in two years, largely by sending fewer people to prison for relatively minor crimes and parole violations.<\/p>\n

Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate complied with the Thursday deadline set by a three-judge panel in San Francisco, while insisting that the court had no authority to order the population-reduction plan or to issue additional decrees necessary to make it work. The state has already served notice of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The plan includes several of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposals that the Legislature has already rejected: allowing some elderly or ailing prisoners to finish their sentences in local custody or home confinement; sending criminals to county jail instead of prison for crimes such as drug possession, receiving stolen property and writing bad checks; and raising the threshold for felony grand theft from $400 to $950.(SF Chronicle 11\/13\/09<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In theory, the Legislature has to approve some of these measures.  Depending on how the bill is presented, it could only need a majority. Which is good, because it seems highly unlikely that any Republicans would actually vote for raising the threshold for grand theft or reducing punishments on drug crimes as the plan calls for.<\/p>\n

And right on cue, Jim Nielsen talks tough:<\/p>\n

Plans to send fewer people to prison, such as the change in the threshold for grand theft, are “an egregious compromise of justice,” said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County). He said the state needs to build more prisons. (SF Chronicle<\/a>)
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, we could build and build and build, but unless we address the underlying cause of the problem, the revolving door of recidivism, we aren’t going to build our way out of the problem. Ignoring the fact that we don’t have the money to build the prisons, the fact that warehousing a substantial portion of the poor male demographic doesn’t create less criminality is the problem. Sen. Mark Leno points out solutions that are actually, you know, solutions, such as revising sentencing guidelines.<\/p>\n

While it always kind of shocks me to write this, California needs to look to states like Kansas<\/a> to find ways to reform our prison system. We need to change the focus of our prisons from simple punishment and warehousing into a broad focus on rehabilitation and getting these people back into productive society.  If we give up on these people, it is only the state that stands to lose as we pay $40,000 per yer to house each of these inmates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,117,200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-32","category-117","category-200"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2J6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}