Werewolf: California's crowded prisons

Every person in prison in California
will one day be released. Take a deep breath and repeat
after me: Every person in prison in California will one day
be released. True, a tiny percentage of them will be
released from prison to their Maker—by suicide, deadly
assault, natural causes, execution, or as a result of an
accident—but all the rest will be released into society.

It bears thinking about long and hard doesn’t it? And
California has thought about it long and hard. According to
a 2007 expert panel report (pdf) commissioned
by the CA Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
(CDCR), there has been more than a dozen reports since 1990,
all recommending the same core ten reforms:

1.
Stop sending non-violent, non-serious offenders to prison.
This particularly pertains to technical parole violators,
who could better be served in community based, intermediate
facilities.

2. Once in prison, use a standardized risk and
needs assessment tool to match resources with needs and
determine appropriate placements for evidence-based
rehabilitation programs.

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3. Develop and implement more and
better work, education, and substance abuse treatment
programs for prisoners and parolees.

4. Reform
California’s determinate [i.e. non-discretionary]
sentencing system to reward prisoners for participating in
rehabilitation programs and allow the system to retain
prisoners who represent a continued public safety risk.

5.
Move low risk prisoners to community-based facilities toward
the later part of their sentences to foster successful
reintegration and save more expensive prison-based
resources. Sub-populations, such as women, the elderly and
the sick, are ideal candidates.

6. Create a sentencing
policy commission or some other administrative body that is
authorized to design new sentencing statutes into a workable
system that balances uniformity of sentencing with
flexibility of individualization.

7. Reform California’s
parole system so that non-serious parole violators are
handled in community based intermediate facilities and more
violent parole violators are prosecuted for new crimes.

8.
Create viable partnerships between state and local
corrections agencies that would expand sentencing options,
enhance rehabilitation services, and strengthen local
reentry systems. Suggestions have been made that include
Community Corrections Acts (to get greater funding for local
criminal justice initiatives) and a Community Corrections
Division of the CDCR charged with developing
alternatives.

9. Evaluate all programs and require that
existing and newly funded programs are based on solid
research evidence.

10. Promote public awareness so that
taxpayers know what they are getting for their public safety
investment and become smarter and more engaged about
California’s prison system.

As I write this
on the last weekend of August, 2009, the California State
Assembly Speaker, Karen Bass, is trying to have a penal
reform bill currently before the Assembly rewritten so that
it will pass on Monday. The companion Senate bill squeaked
through amid much acrimonious debate on Thursday morning.
The legislation is part of a reform package requested by
Governor Schwarzenegger (R) two years ago, and is required
as part of a Budget deal to help create a $1.2 billion cut
in Corrections expenditures.

In the Senate, all Republicans opposed it, and
four Democrats voted with them—the final vote was 21/19.
Later on Thursday, the companion bill was debated even more
acrimoniously in the Assembly. It will have to be severely
gutted in order to pass—in large part because politicians
value their jobs more highly than they value reasoned debate
and reform. Assembly members can serve only three terms,
each of two years, and even those who won’t be able to run
for Assembly again in 2010 but have their eye on other
elected positions don’t want to go on the record as being
“soft on crime”. The inclusion of a new Sentencing
Commission in the bill is particularly controversial and
will likely be dropped.

Responses from
inside the door

Besides
the proximity of the 2010 elections, which include election
of the next Governor, two other factors are reflected in the
timing of this legislation: the budget deal mentioned
earlier, in which the Governor asked the legislature to find
ways of reducing the prison population by about 27,000 in
order to save money; and a ruling by a three-judge panel of
the Federal District Court saying that, because the
inadequate health care provided by the CDCR amounts to
“cruel and unusual punishment”—forbidden by the US
Constitution—the prison population needs to be reduced by
40,000 to a mere 137 percent of CDCR’s design bed
capacity.

The CDCR Secretary’s response to that August
4 ruling, which gave him 45 days to come up with a two-year
prisoner number reduction plan, is available as a video here. In it, Secretary Cate refers to
the key components of the Governor’s plan to reduce the
prison population: “parole reform; alternative custody,
including the use of GPS technology for our aged and infirm
inmates and inmates serving 12 months or less; incentive
credits for inmates to achieve accomplishments in prison
like a GED or a drug and alcohol program that reduce
recidivism…. We think they are sound measures that will
reduce our prison population in a safe way over time.”
(GED stands for general education diploma, and is the lowest
educational requirement for anyone seeking
employment.)

The California Correctional Peace Officers
Association (CCPOA), which represents the more than 30,000
correctional peace officers working inside California's
prisons and youth facilities, and the state's parole agents
who supervise inmates after their release, also supports the
Governor’s reforms, including a sentencing commission.
(Peace officer is a generic term in the US for any law
enforcement officer charged with maintaining civil peace.)
At a recent forum on California’s
correctional crisis, Michael Jimenez, President of CCPOA, is
reported as saying that the current sentencing scheme is
“so bad that he could not imagine anything worse. The
CCPOA has been pushing for a sentencing commission as well,
but very disheartened with the political process around it.
It all revolves, said Jimenez, around money; there is no
political fix for the sentencing problem as long as our
policy calculations are influenced by short term,
year-to-year tactics.”

It should be noted that because
of its political contribution history, the CCPOA is hugely
disliked in California. An inmate of a state prison who has
a blog on the San Francisco Bay Guardian website, in a post
entitled What should government do?, writes that
the “only rational solution to reducing the cost of
imprisoning the populace is to change the sentencing laws
and criminal code to a degree that reflects our principles
as a free society in a way that makes sense. Only when the
need for guards is lessened by a reduced need for prisons
will there actually be any ground gained on breaking the
stranglehold the CCPOA and other powerful unions have on
California.” The same blogger had earlier written that
releasing low-risk prisoners early would be detrimental to
the remaining prison population because it’s the low-risk
prisoners who work in support services such as kitchens and
laundries, and detrimental to California itself as low-risk
prisoners also form the backbone of the CA Department of
Forestry and Fire Protection’s wildfire fighting
teams.

Responses from
outside the door

Groups
representing police officers intensely lobbied Sacramento
about the prisoner early release plans when they were first
announced as part of the Budget deal. In a June 22
Memorandum to the Legislature, the California Fraternal
Order of Police, California Narcotic Officers Association,
California Peace Officers Association, California Police
Chiefs Association, and eight groups representing police and
sheriffs in Southern California cities and counties, along
with the LA County District Attorney, said they were
“extremely concerned about the damage to public safety
that will be caused” by going ahead with the plans.

But
by July 23, the LA Times was reporting that the California Police
Chiefs Association was “very pleased” that the proposed
legislation would include home detention and target specific
offenders who behave well, are sick or have the least time
to serve, instead of the blanket release the CPCA had
feared. All that changed when the bill that is being voted
on was written to include a sentencing commission—a
concept the police adamantly oppose. Perhaps because it will
reduce the number of convictions and therefore the value of
property seized, which, according to federal law, police
forces can sell and keep the money for themselves.

The
“damage to public safety” meme articulated by the CPCA
and other organizations back in June and now being
repeatedly conjured up in the legislative debates over the
current bill is far from dead and likely never will be. It
is such an easy meme to get going. The popular image from
news reports is of parolees being returned to jail because
of new crimes they commit. Naturally, from a news
organization’s point of view—the more spectacular and
gruesome the crime the better! Furthermore, because of the
extremely high numbers of parolees returned to prison in
California, the public is easily persuaded to think that the
early release of prisoners will result in thousands of newly
paroled dangerous criminals roaming the streets.

Jeffrey Lin, an assistant professor in
the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the
University of Denver, and one of the authors of this article about parole violations and
revocations in the June issue of the journal Federal
Probation, told me in a phone interview that “the proportion of prison
admissions comprised of those who’ve had parole revoked
has been rising, and in California, it’s now around 60
percent.” He was unable to provide current figures on the
numbers for each type of parole revocation, but in the
article the authors say that “Over a third (35 percent) of
all the recorded parole violations were for noncriminal, or
‘technical,’ violations. Two-thirds of technical
violations were for absconding supervision, meaning that the
parolee missed an appointment and/or his or her whereabouts
were unknown.” [Emphasis mine.]

It might surprise
legislators to know that the U.S. public actually does
understand that a prison sentence is not always the most
appropriate way of punishing a crime. A June 2009 Zogby Poll (pdf) commissioned
by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, which has
been in existence since 1907, reported that over
three-quarters (77%) of those polled believe alternatives to
incarceration do not decrease public safety.

(A quick word
here about terms used in speaking about the CA criminal
justice and penal systems. All crimes are defined in the
California Penal Code, and are classified as petty crimes,
misdemeanours, or felonies—which are crimes punishable
by at least a year in prison or a fine exceeding $1,000.
Some crimes are “wobblers”, that is, they might be
decided in court to be either a felony or misdemeanor. In
the Zogby Poll report they are using “prison” to mean
state penal institutions and “jail” for the place any
municipal jurisdiction such as a city or county sends those
convicted of a crime.)

One of the greatest problems with
the California criminal justice and penal systems is that,
until Schwarzenegger began forcing reforms in 2005, the
Department of Corrections did not have the words “and
Rehabilitation” in its title, and did not see its role as
preparing inmates for a life outside the prison walls. In
contrast, Arizona’s Getting Ready program works with the
prisoner from the day he or she is admitted to turn them
into what might be termed the key that will eventually fit
the lock on their prison’s door. In other words, prisoners
are rewarded for doing well and striving to better
themselves, and by molding themselves in that way, they earn
their release.

Although it’s not available online,
except snippets as part of a 2008 promo, episode 1502 of a
TV series called Visionaries, which airs on public
service television stations, reports that in Arizona:
“Inmate-on-inmate violence is down by 37 percent,
inmate-on-staff assaults by 51 percent, and inmate suicides
have been reduced by 33 percent. But the real change comes
when the inmates are released. An inmate who has gone
through the program is 35 percent more successful on the
outside. That means they are more likely to get jobs, stay
drug free and reunite with their family. It also means they
are far less likely to commit another crime.”

All of
that costs money, which California obviously has so little
of that it’s prepared to tackle the big issues around
crime in the current bill. Those issues include what
constitutes a jailable offence, what the sentence should be,
how much of the sentence should be served, what can be done
to improve parole and probation so recidivism can be
reduced, and what rehabilitation services should be provided
and where. County and municipal jurisdictions oppose the
Governor’s early release plan because of the strain it
will place on local services provided to the formerly
incarcerated.

For an insight into what a prisoner
can expect to experience on their release—early or
otherwise—I spoke with Rev. Harry Williams, Jr., who has
years of experience with both adults and juveniles in San
Francisco. He works with Glide Church’s Youthbuild
Leadership Program, a nonprofit. The website says that Glide Youthbuild is “a leadership and
training program for 17-24 year-old youth from San
Francisco’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods. The
program includes onsite construction skills training,
personal development and leadership skills workshops, GED
preparation and the ability to earn academic credit towards
a high school diploma. It places graduates in apprenticeship
opportunities with building trade unions (Carpentry,
Drywall, Ironwork, Cement Masons).”

Many of Williams’
youthful clients are formerly incarcerated or become
incarcerated during the course of the program. He says that
juvenile detention centers “condition youthful offenders
to uniforms”, and that nowadays prison is no longer a
scary thing, unlike twenty or thirty years ago when there
were far fewer prisoners. Nowadays, when so many are
incarcerated, he says, the idea of going to prison “has
lost its fear, its terror. It’s just a rite of
passage.”

“For the recidivism rate to be so high for a
place that’s so dangerous, you have to ask why,”
Williams says. “It’s because of the lack of resources in
the outside world, lack or direction, lack of job
opportunity, lack of understanding on the outside, and
inaccessible drug recovery services.” He is also skeptical
of the political will to make meaningful changes, and points
to one San Francisco facility run by a private company whose
stock is traded on Wall Street as an example. The Cornell Facility
(pdf), as it is known locally, provides transitional
services for those released from federal custody, but it is
in one of the most crime-ridden areas of the City, making it
difficult for its inmates to break from their
past.

Prisoners on parole from state prisons are given
$200 and released to the jurisdiction in which they were
sentenced—even if that city or county is hundreds of miles
away from where their family might be. Even if they had been
sentenced where their family lives, the prisoner might not
be able to go back to live with them, either because the
family will face eviction if the person re-offends, or
because a condition of their parole is that they don’t
associate with them.

As for finding work,
felons are prohibited from working in a wide range of jobs
in California, including getting a barber’s license—yet
barbering is one of the trades taught in state prisons.
Parole officers’ caseloads are so large that they now are
no longer thought of as agents of rehabilitation helping
ex-offenders get work and a place to live—that takes too
much time—but as agents of surveillance and re-arrest.
With the odds stacked against ex-prisoners on the housing
and job front, who can be surprised if some fail to report
to their parole officer just to get back to jail with its
guaranteed “three hots and a cot”?

In short, without
major reforms here on the outside—including a shift in the
way the media reports crime, and a disentanglement of public
safety issues from the self-serving interests of the
businesses, local jurisdictions, and unions that profit in
some way from having high prosecution and incarceration
rates, plus an end to the self-serving interests of
politicians—there will always be a “corrections
crisis” in
California.

ENDS

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