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| Senate Panel Calls for California Prison Budget Cuts |
| By Ventura County Star |
| Published: 02/03/2003 |
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Saying that every area of state operations must be cut back in response to California's $26 billion budget shortfall, a Senate panel recently voted to make cuts in the one agency that Gov. Gray Davis' proposed budget spared -- the $5 billion annual prison budget. A Senate budget subcommittee voted to delay by one year the planned construction of a new prison in Delano, release nonviolent inmates from prison one month earlier than their scheduled parole date, prohibit those convicted of petty theft from being sentenced to prison, limit to one year the amount of time nonviolent parolees spend on supervised parole and increase the sentence-reduction credits inmates get for working in prison. All told, the actions would save an estimated $190 million over the next 18 months. Chairman Byron Sher, D-Palo Alto, said the cutbacks are needed because the state 'is in a crisis situation.' He urged the Davis administration to come up with its own suggestions to reduce prison spending. 'We are serious about effecting serious savings in the Department of Corrections budget,' Sher told a department official. 'We want to be deliberate about this, so help us.' Except for the decision to increase sentence-reduction credits, the measures were all opposed by the sole Republican on the three-member panel, Sen. Bruce McPherson of Santa Cruz. McPherson is chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, and he argued that these policy changes should be debated in his committee rather than be enacted unilaterally by budget-cutters. Referring to a proposal rejected by the panel to release inmates a year earlier than their scheduled parole, McPherson said the tradeoff in reduced public safety 'is just not worth it.' The actions taken by the committee, if approved by the Legislature and Davis, would be part of midyear budget cuts Davis has asked legislators to enact by the end of next week. In the months ahead, as the Legislature shapes the 2003-2004 budget, Kuehl said other prison savings must be proposed and debated. 'There are a lot of things to look at in terms of who should be in prison,' she said. One group that should not be in prison, the panel decided, is those people who are convicted of shoplifting a second time. Under current law, that can be prosecuted as a felony and the offender sent to prison. The change approved by the panel would make that crime a misdemeanor, meaning that offenders could be incarcerated only in county jails. Craig Brown, speaking for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union that represents prison officers, argued against the change. |
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