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| Calif. Budget Strategy: Private Prisons |
| By The Alameda-Times Star |
| Published: 01/23/2006 |
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Driven by a rising inmate population, prison spending in California is scheduled to exceed $8 billion this year. But the real intrigue in the state's 2006-07 corrections budget is in what it's proposing for the near-and long-term future. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's summary on the spending plan details a proposal "to pursue authority to secure additional inmate capacity through contracts with other providers." The wording is out of the actual budget bill, which calls for nearly doubling the number of private prison beds in California, from the current 8,500 to an estimated 17,000 in the next two years. Schwarzenegger's "strategic growth plan," meanwhile, lays out a bond-funded, decade-long $12 billion jail and prison construction proposal that would create space for 83,000 additional inmates. About a third of that number 27,000 are projected to be short-term parole violators who would be housed in county facilities instead of in state prisons, according to the governor's Department of Finance. Together, the shift of the parolees to county jails and the construction of the new private prison beds would eliminate the need for at least seven prisons based on the current population average of about 5,000 per institution that would otherwise have to be built to house the projected inmate increase in the next decade. Already, the proposals have raised red flags with the politically influential California Correctional Peace Officers Association. The union represents 30,000 prison officers but would lose out on thousands of additional dues-paying members if the administration goes with the new plan. |
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