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| Continue prison realignment? Fear mongers were wrong |
| By modbee.com - Jackie Goldberg |
| Published: 06/01/2012 |
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California -- A year into Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to realign public safety, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has produced a vision of "The Future of California Corrections," whose plans, not surprisingly, are mirrored in the recent May revise budget. The plan is an attempt to overhaul and redirect a prison system that has been floundering for at least a decade, but it doesn't go far enough. A year ago we heard fear-mongerers warning of dangerous criminals being released and counties too broke to provide jail space, parole officers or programming for realigned prisoners. One year in, how's realignment actually working? The number of people held in state prison has dropped by more than 25,000 in 16 months since Brown has been in office. The count of people on parole is down almost 30,000, and the number of people held in private out-of-state prisons is down 10 percent; all that without a spike in crime. The crime rate continues to fall and putting fewer people in state prisons means saving tax dollars, and given the $15.7 billion gap forecast in the May revise those savings have never been needed more than they are now. CDCR estimates that it is saving $1.5 billion a year through realignment and will save another $2.2 billion a year by canceling $4.1 billion in new construction projects. As we see budgets slashed for In-Home Supportive Services, poor families being pushed out of child care and off Medi-Cal, and fewer high school graduates being able to afford to attend our public higher education system, we know where the money is needed. Based on an encouraging first year, can we expect further parole and sentencing reforms resulting in even more reductions in corrections spending in the next few years? Unfortunately, some are making other plans. Realignment is an idea that was floating around the Capitol when I arrived in 2000. The U.S. Supreme Court's order to reduce deadly overcrowding in our prisons provided political cover for the meek and a political opportunity for the bold to turn around a bloated corrections system. So why is CDCR proposing to raise the population cap to 145 percent of capacity and build $810 million worth of new prison beds? In my years in Sacramento, I saw that CDCR had developed a culture of construction. Got a problem? Build a new prison. As a Los Angeles native, I understood the culture of construction, familiar from decades of freeway building in Southern California. Building more freeways was the problem. We're just beginning to understand that about prisons and jails. Building all those prisons also meant borrowing billions – a big part of the wall of debt that Brown is trying to chip away at by cutting health and human services and education. A year into Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to realign public safety, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has produced a vision of "The Future of California Corrections," whose plans, not surprisingly, are mirrored in the recent May revise budget. The plan is an attempt to overhaul and redirect a prison system that has been floundering for at least a decade, but it doesn't go far enough. A year ago we heard fear-mongerers warning of dangerous criminals being released and counties too broke to provide jail space, parole officers or programming for realigned prisoners. One year in, how's realignment actually working? The number of people held in state prison has dropped by more than 25,000 in 16 months since Brown has been in office. The count of people on parole is down almost 30,000, and the number of people held in private out-of-state prisons is down 10 percent; all that without a spike in crime. The crime rate continues to fall and putting fewer people in state prisons means saving tax dollars, and given the $15.7 billion gap forecast in the May revise those savings have never been needed more than they are now. CDCR estimates that it is saving $1.5 billion a year through realignment and will save another $2.2 billion a year by canceling $4.1 billion in new construction projects. As we see budgets slashed for In-Home Supportive Services, poor families being pushed out of child care and off Medi-Cal, and fewer high school graduates being able to afford to attend our public higher education system, we know where the money is needed. Based on an encouraging first year, can we expect further parole and sentencing reforms resulting in even more reductions in corrections spending in the next few years? Unfortunately, some are making other plans. Realignment is an idea that was floating around the Capitol when I arrived in 2000. The U.S. Supreme Court's order to reduce deadly overcrowding in our prisons provided political cover for the meek and a political opportunity for the bold to turn around a bloated corrections system. So why is CDCR proposing to raise the population cap to 145 percent of capacity and build $810 million worth of new prison beds? In my years in Sacramento, I saw that CDCR had developed a culture of construction. Got a problem? Build a new prison. As a Los Angeles native, I understood the culture of construction, familiar from decades of freeway building in Southern California. Building more freeways was the problem. We're just beginning to understand that about prisons and jails. Building all those prisons also meant borrowing billions – a big part of the wall of debt that Brown is trying to chip away at by cutting health and human services and education. Read More. |
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