Fiscal Savings and Medical Release Bill Presents Schwarzenegger With Rare Opportunity

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Beatrice Smith-Dyer

As Governor Schwarzenegger sifts through the bills before him the next few hours and days, he will find a rare opportunity to alleviate both the prison crowding and budget deficit our state has had to confront this year. This opportunity comes in Assembly Bill AB 1539 (Krekorian), The Fiscal Savings and Medical Release Bill, which streamlines the existing medical release process for people in prison who are terminally ill, relieving the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) of high medical costs incurred in caring for this population. AB 1539 also extends the reach of the law to include permanently medically incapacitated people in prison.

I am currently imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility, one of the two world’s largest women’s prisons, both here in California. Now that the state’s prison healthcare system is under federal receivership, it is common knowledge that medical care here is a joke. Since 2000, I have volunteered in the prison hospice, and have been a peer counselor there since 1996. I’ve seen so many people back there die this past decade. A young lady here recently passed away, all of a sudden. It doesn’t matter how old or young we are – everyone faces death. Some happen to know when their time is coming.

The existing medical release law was enacted in 1997 because prisons were never intended to act as long-term healthcare providers for terminally ill people in prison. Currently, if a CDCR doctor diagnoses someone with six months or less to live, they can initiate a process involving the CDCR Secretary, the Board of Parole Hearings, or both, to recall their sentence if they agree the person does not pose a threat to public safety. Recently, a lack of notification procedures and directives to medical staff have meant people passing away before the process is complete.

My work as a hospice volunteer is important, but AB 1539 gives people who know their time is coming a chance at dying at home with family, and promotes fiscal responsibility. I don’t know if there’s anything more important.

AB 1539 is a common sense way to address prison crowding. People inside and outside of prison know that building more prisons doesn’t do anything for the population, doesn’t do anything for the medical, and taxes every part of our existence in prison. The recent legislation to add more prison beds is just another way the system has failed us. We know this; the three-judge panel knows this; the taxpayers and our advocates know this. In the past, the CDCR’s response has been to retain a person beyond their release date if they don’t have somewhere to send them. By streamlining the medical release process, AB 1539 will allow interested individuals and advocates to assist in finding placements for people who are terminally ill or permanently incapacitated before their release date, in order that their liberty not be compromised.