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April 27, 2007
State government in the "post-partisan" era: Schwarzenegger , State Legislature agree to spend $283,018.87 per prison bed to avoid early release of nonviolent prisoners, appease federal courts.
Dear FCL Supporter,
Yesterday, in the first test of what Governor Schwarzenegger has dubbed the "post-partisan era," Democrats and Republicans passed a lopsided, $7.3 billion compromise deal to build 53,000 new prison and jail beds in two phases. Governor Schwarzenegger indicated that he will sign the bill.
Without the benefit of a single committee hearing, Assembly Bill 900 (Jose Solorio, D., Santa Ana) passed the Assembly by a vote of 69-0 with little floor debate and before the bill was even in print. It was then transmitted immediately to the Senate where it passed by a vote of 27-10. Several Republican Senators raised objections to the lack of committee hearings and the high cost of the measure. Republicans want more prison beds, but they want to reduce costs by making more use of private prisons. State Senator Tom McClintock (R., Thousand Oaks) also objected to financing the new beds with lease-revenue bonds, which do not require voter approval.
Missing from the compromise deal were several good elements (dare we say, the only good elements?) that Governor Schwarzenegger had proposed earlier this year as part of his "prison reform" package. The creation of a Sentencing Commission that would review our state's Byzantine scheme of sentencing laws, and parole reforms that would reduce the number of persons returned to prison for technical violations of the conditions of their parole, were conspicuously absent from the compromise plan.
At $7.3 billion, the cost of each new bed is approximately $138,000. But when we include the debt service on the bonds, the total cost will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 billion, which comes to $283,018.87 per bed. And that does not include the increased operational cost of housing additional prisoners.
As a result of three decades of "tough on crime" lawmaking, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) currently warehouses 172,000 prisoners in space designed for 100,000. CDCR is predicting a prison population of 190,000 by 2012. Imagine what our state could accomplish if we invested these dollars in local communities and services for people at risk. Rather than planning to reduce the number of people who will wind up in prison, the new deal means that the Legislature can continue its business-as-usual approach of creating new sentencing enhancements and new felonies.
A fact sheet distributed by Speaker Fabian Nuñez's office before the bill was in print makes reference to "More and Better Rehabilitation" and requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to show "success" in implementing rehabilitation programs, getting new beds on line and correcting management deficiencies. How "success" is defined is left to the imagination.
In other words, the Legislature is granting CDCR, an agency that the Legislature admits is beset by management deficiencies and its inability to rehabilitate, the authority to build 24,000 new beds in Phase 1. If CDCR demonstrates "success," it will then have the authority to build 29,000 additional beds in Phase 2.
These lofty platitudes ignore several historical facts:
- For decades, the Legislature has severely under funded programming for prisoners and continues to do so
- Despite report after report from expert panels, commissions and think tanks combined with endless informational hearings on how to fix our state's prison system, the Legislature lacks the political will to provide adequate oversight of CDCR.
Moreover, the agreement ignores the obvious contradiction that if CDCR (and the Legislature) would rehabilitate prisoners, there would be no need for additional prison beds.
By doing nothing, CDCR is entitled to build 24,000 new beds in Phase 1, along with a nod and a handshake that CDCR promises to do better in the future. Of course, if CDCR doesn't show "success" in Phase 1, the Legislature will still be asked to open the state treasury to build more beds, and given its track record, the Legislature is unlikely to hold CDCR accountable and will again be complicit.
Despite this being the era of "evidence-based corrections," Governor Schwarzenegger and the Republican Caucus have insisted on no early release, even for those prisoners who pose no threat to public safety. There is nothing magical about the length of prison sentences which are determined politically, and California already releases an average of 10,000 prisoners per month on parole.
It now remains to be seen if the federal courts will see through the charade and impose population caps.
Many thanks to those of you who made phone calls and wrote letters to legislators and Governor Schwarzenegger to voice your objections to prison expansion. Undoubtedly, there are some political lessons to be learned from this year-long struggle that we can hopefully build upon. We will continue to resist over reliance on incarceration, which has proven to be an inhumane, self-perpetuating and costly failure for solving social problems and results in more harm to communities and families.
Sincerely,
Jim Lindburg
Legislative Advocate
http://www.fclca.org
E-mail: JimL@fclca.org
Phone: (916) 443-3734
Fax: (916) 448-6109
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To read the bill text and to see how your legislators voted on AB 900, point your web browser to:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_900&sess=CUR&house=B&author=solorio
Note: References to committee hearings on AB 900 refer to an earlier version of the bill that dealt with the California Transportation Commission. AB 900 was quickly gutted and amended to its current version after legislative leaders announced that a deal had been made on prison "reform."
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