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| Correcting problems in prisons |
| By lompocrecord.com |
| Published: 05/03/2012 |
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California -- There was a time, not so long ago, when the California prison system seemed headed inevitably for a complete meltdown. There were about 140,000 inmates in facilities designed to handle about 80,000. Sick prisoners weren’t getting the treatment they needed, and the in-prison death rate soared. The Department of Corrections was spending billions warehousing criminals, many of whom, after serving their time and being released, quickly broke the law again and were shuttled back inside. It got so bad that federal agencies began to intervene. The courts ordered state prison medical care to be overseen by someone outside the prison hierarchy. Then, a year ago this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the California prison inmate population to be significantly reduced — or else. Sometimes it takes a slap upside the head to wake bureaucrats up to reality. The high court’s order was just such a hit. Not long after the court order to reduce prison populations, Gov. Jerry Brown came up with a scheme to realign the system so that lower-level offenders could be housed in county jails instead of in the much more expensive state system. That shift has been in progress for several months, and so far at least, county officials are going along with it. Now, the Department of Corrections has floated a new blueprint, one that would adjust the entire system, based on the lower total population mandated by the Supreme Court. This goes beyond the governor’s realignment strategy, and it appears to be a reasonable approach to what had become an unreasonable, unwise use of tax dollars. Under the department’s plan, the state system would be streamlined to accommodate mostly high-level offenders, the worst of the worst. And because that category of felons tends to have lengthy sentences, the net result would eventually be an older prison population — which also tends to be less volatile and violent. The graying of the state prisons is already under way. Ten years ago, the 33 state prisons contained about 6,000 inmates age 55 and older. Today, that group numbers more than 14,000. In five years, experts predict 20,000 or more senior inmates. Read More. |
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