Reforming Our Prisons in 2008: Can California Get Rational Sentencing and Parole Reforms in the Crucible of the Budget Crisis?

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

The outcry over Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal last week to release 22,000 prisoners as part of a budget deficit reduction plan has drawn some predictable responses—mostly expressions of horror and fear mongering ala Willie Horton about criminals coming to your neighborhood. It came as a shock to Assembly Republicans—and taking a look at what the Governor had to say repeatedly last year about prisoner releases, this is actually very understandable. In fact, the Governor’s proposal has been criticized by leading Democrats such as Speaker of the Assembly Fabian Nunez as being irresponsible and he voiced his opposition last week shortly after the Governor spoke.

The reality is that some prisoners will have to be released early and sentences need to be brought more in line with what is needed to protect Californians. This is either going to happen through a Federal Court order because of overcrowding or through action by the state—in the form of executive orders of the Governor or legislation. Aside from the numbers and categories of criminals to be released early or diverted from the prisons, the biggest flaw in what the Governor has put forth is that those being released will be put on summary probation—meaning none of them will be supervised by a parole agent and in the main they will not receive the help needed to prevent them from committing new crimes and being back in the prison system—if there is room for them in the jails or prisons in the state. While from a financial standpoint we may be saving the $40,000 per year that it costs to incarcerate a criminal, it is penny wise and pound foolish not to spend some fraction of that amount to counsel, supervise, and provide what is needed to keep many of them from returning.

The legislature gavels into a special session today to act on the fiscal emergency declared by the Governor and find ways to deal with a $3 billion shortfall the state faces in the year that ends June 30, 2008. One of the areas they must look at is the ballooning budget of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The rise in this area of the state budget has been meteoric for decades—with a 12% increase in 2006 alone.

And it went up at an even higher rate last year. 2007’s prison construction bill, AB 900, means we will spend an additional $7.4 billion on top of the current annual operating budget of more than $10 billion. A San Francisco Chronicle news article warned last May that: “Based on current spending trends, California's prison budget will overtake spending on the state's universities in five years. No other big state in the country spends close to as much on its prisons compared with universities.”