Sep 14 2009
Time is up on California prisons
The state of California has until the end of the week to deliver its plan to reduce the prison population, over two years, by 40,000 inmates. The federal court set the deadline and the demands for the reduction based on the premise that overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional conditions in the California prisons.
There are three class action lawsuits (Perez, Plata and Coleman) that say California has unconstitutional levels of care in dental, medical and mental health care (respectively). These cases were involved in a recent three-judge panel hearing on overcrowding. Based on the testimony in the hearing, the three-judge panel (of federal judges) said that California had to reduce its prison population by 40,000 over the next two years, and demanded a plan for that reduction. The plan is due Friday.
Any such plan need legislative action because it will involve changing laws and reducing sentences. However, the Legislature did not act on such a plan before session adjourned. This means there can be no plan submitted…or at least no plan that has a chance of being put into action. In all three cases; Plata, Perez and Coleman, the courts have demanded various plans to raise the levels of care in the prison system. The Governor has a history of submitting a plan, without it ever having been approved by the Legislature. Then when it comes time to get money for the plan from the Legislature, the plan hits a road block, and then the court gets mad because the plan is not being put into action. This is, in no small part, what landed the state in front of the three-judge panel to begin with.
Now all the Governor can take, legitimately, to the three-judge panel is the small inmate reduction plan the Legislature passed - which means only half the required number of inmates are going to be reduced.
The Legislature is immune from being sued, and as such, are not a party to the law suit. The Governor is, and he can be held in contempt if the state refuses to hand a plan in on Friday. The three-judge panel has already said they will give no extensions on the timeline.
This is both a good, and bad, thing for California. When inmate costs are rising, it is a good thing to cut down on inmates. With prison spending topping $9.5 billion for this fiscal year, it is important to cut spending. On the other hand, it means that several crimes, which are currently crimes, will have no punishment attached to them. It also means that rehabilitation and education programs are the first things cut in the prisons.
Studies have shown that education and rehabilitation - in effect, providing a way for the inmate to work legitimately - are the best ways to prevent breaking parole and having inmates return to prison. These are the first programs cut when costs are cut, and the programs are not figured into the cost per inmate in California. This means the actual spending on prisons is much higher than the “cost per inmate” figure would have you believe.
Why is California’s cost per inmate so high? Ask the CCPOA (correctional officer’s union). They have enormous costs and contracts, even though they have a back log of applications for positions. There are huge overtime costs because the CCPOA cannot get through enough background checks to allow enough cadets into the academy to become correctional officers. If the background checks were completed, there would be more candidates, more officers, and lower overtime costs.
California prisons are also more expensive to run because of where they are located - in the middle of no where. A prison requires all kinds of things to support it (wastewater treatment, food services, electricity and water) and these things are higher in the middle of nowhere.
Reducing the prison population is a good thing. Having it federally mandated is a bad thing. California needs to step up and get costs under control for prisons, and get the prison population under control.
