Democratic Senators Call for Prison Plan from Schwarzenegger Administration—Inmate Population “A Bouncing Ball” Making Budget “V

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Not a Single Prison Bed Built Since $8 Billion Bond Passed a “Year Ago

From the Office of Senate President pro Tem
Don Perata

Five leading Senate Democrats today requested the Governor provide a plan within 30 days to coordinate all the administration’s efforts to build prison beds, manage its corrections department and limit prison population growth.

In a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the senators said the administration has failed to offer a “useful answer” on how several interrelated developments, such as the Governor’s proposal to release inmates early and a federal court receiver’s request for 10,000 new beds, affect the prison population’s bottom line.

The senators noted that one year after the passage of AB 900, a $7.9 billion measure to address prison overcrowding, not a single bed has been constructed.

The full text of the letter follows.

April 28, 2008

Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger
Governor of California
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814

Re: AB 900

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

Saturday marks the first anniversary of AB 900, the Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation Services Act of 2007. At your urging, we adopted this $7.9 billion legislation to lessen the serious overcrowding problems in California’s state prisons. AB 900 was your central argument to avoid a possible court mandated early release of prisoners.

Yet, one year since its passage, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has not constructed any beds!

Your budget proposes to release inmates from California’s prisons 20 months early and place low-level parolees on summary parole. If adopted, this would reduce prison population by twenty-eight thousand prisoners. The federal court receiver in the Plata lawsuit mandates the construction of ten thousand medical and mental health beds. Court settlement talks are underway to reduce the number of inmates in our prisons.

We have repeatedly inquired publicly and privately how these many proposals work together. We have yet to receive a useful answer. With all of the proposals out there, the prison population is a bouncing ball; we have no target. We face a multi-billion dollar deficit and a $6.9 billion bond demand from the federal court receiver. A 2008-09 corrections budget is virtually impossible when we don’t know who’s on first.