Alarming cries are being heard up and down the state these days: Prisons near 200 percent capacity! Recidivism rate at nearly 70 percent! Shocking reports of violence, abuse, and neglect! Virtually no rehabilitation, treatment, or education programs! “Life-threatening” conditions place prison health-care system in federal receivership! Entire prison system under threat of federal takeover! These words are coming from not only inmate’s families, but from journalists, oversight organizations, university research centers, and numerous advocates for criminal justice, prison, and parole reform.
This is not the first time these cries have been heard, nor is it the first time solutions have been proposed. Some of the study reports we have seen over the years include: The Blue Ribbon Commission on Inmate Population Management report (1990); the Little Hoover Commission report, Beyond Bars: Correctional Reforms to Lower Prison Costs and Reduce Crime (1998); another Little Hoover Commission report, Back to the Community: Safe & Sound Parole Policies (Report #172, November 2003); and the Deukmejian Independent Review Panel report (2004).
Already this year we have Understanding California Corrections (2006), a California Policy Research Center, University of California, report by Dr. Joan Petersilia. Also published this year, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons report, “Confronting Confinement,” (June 2006). And most recently, federal receiver, Robert Sillen’s first bimonthly report (July 2006) to U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson. This report describes a disorganized, poorly supervised health-care system that puts patients at great risk of medical error and wasted tens of millions of dollars.
As one reviews this 16-year history of findings, proposed solutions, and planned implementations to the prison crisis, two questions beg to be answered: (1) Why are essentially the same solutions being proposed today as 16 years ago? (2) Why has nothing, save building more prisons, been done? We still have overcrowded, violent, corrupt, turnstile human warehouses where the culture does more to promote crime than to rehabilitate criminals, where the mentally ill unable to cope suffer, where drug abusers continue to use, where disease is rampant, where the ‘code of silence’ unjustly protects wrongdoers, including CDCR employees . . . . Building more prisons has not solved a single problem embedded in this bureaucratic quagmire; building more prisons has instead perpetuated existing problems on a much larger scale!
Will our leaders finally act on experts’ warnings and advice as the Special Legislative Session convenes on August 7? Here are the key recommendations that the above study reports list, peppered (in parentheses) with some more progressive recommendations:
1. Reduce the prison population. Move mentally ill inmates into hospitals or community treatment. (Many progressives advocate that mental hospitals should be managed by a new, qualified agency, not the CDCR.) Move substance abusers with no serious convictions into community drug treatment programs. Release the elderly and infirm to family members or nursing homes. Find a way to override determinate sentences for deserving prisoners, while preventing dangerous prisoners from being released. Consider alternate locations for illegal-immigrant inmates.
2. Eliminate political and labor union influences on prison policy. In a manner similar to a 2004 Deukmejian report recommendation, reorganize prison management from the top down to ensure that those who establish prison policy and direct prison operations guarantee prisons do what they were primarily intended to do, i.e., to rehabilitate the majority of inmates and thereby help to correct societal ills. Reassign or terminate wrongdoers. (Support a prison employee culture of humanity, respect, and rehabilitation. See California Progress Report articles, “Reforming the California Prison System Requires More Than Posturing and Finger Pointing” (July 5, 2006) and “California Prisons Must Be Therapeutic to Protect the Public” (July 5, 2006) This could begin with inmate groups who are amenable and a low-security risk, keeping them separate from the old culture to allow the new culture to flourish and prove itself.)
3. Reestablish and add new rehabilitation programs. With fewer inmates, there should be no excuse for lack of programs. A crucial factor in rehabilitation and education programs is that they motivate and reward those who complete a program. With determinate sentencing, there is not enough incentive. Inmates who do well in their programs should be considered for early re-entry programs in prison. (Again, the culture issue is important: Corrections employees must be convinced that a change to a more therapeutic environment will not put them at greater risk, and inmates need to be convinced that they have a basic worth on which to build.)
In addition, experts also agree that influences outside the prison system need immediate attention. Most important among these are:
1. Eliminate most, if not all, determinate sentencing laws. In Understanding California Corrections, Dr. Petersilia says, “The determinate sentencing system is widely regarded as a failure — even by its creators. It has both reduced incentives for inmates to participate in rehabilitation programs while in prison and tied the state’s hands in dealing with particularly dangerous offenders whose mandated sentence has elapsed.” If our legislators could change their attitude from “tough on crime” to “smart on crime,” they could mandate more judicial discretion in sentencing.
2. Establish and use more local facilities and treatment centers. This approach has proven very successful since the passage in November 2000 of Proposition 36 — California’s drug treatment-instead-of-incarceration initiative, the state’s only real criminal justice reform in a decade — now considered by some to be weakened, others to be strengthened — by a recent legislative rewrite. A budget consideration: The federal government helps fund community mental health care through Medicare and Medicaid, but states pay the full tab for jails and prisons, including inmate health care. (There need to be more initiatives like this one, perhaps in the area of mental illness.)
People convicted of lesser crimes should serve time in local jails and detention centers, not prisons. However, the Council of State Governments, according to Ronald Fraser in The Herald Mail Online on Sunday, July 23, 2006, states that “halfway houses and nonresidential, community-based supervision programs, including day reporting centers, community service and other work assignments, are viable alternatives to incarceration.” Mr. Fraser, who writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, continues, “These alternatives also allow offenders to build work and social skills needed to avoid future run-ins with the law.”
3. Establish a selective parole policy, and find ways to implement local re-entry programs. One of Dr. Petersilia’s concluding remarks in Understanding California Corrections sums up how parole reform can reduce recidivism: “Employ parole supervision selectively and in a more concentrated way, so that it targets the most likely re-offenders. End or dramatically reduce the imposition of parole on those who are least likely to re-offend, which wastes resources and provides a negligible benefit to public safety.” She also says that parole revocation should not be used in lieu of prosecution for parolees who are suspected of committing new serious crimes, nor should simple parole violations be cause for re-incarceration.
The governor’s proposed “re-entry” facilities for job-training, mental health therapy, and other services aimed at helping those capable of rehabilitation to return to society should begin in prison, as discussed above. Re-entry programs must be need-specific and well coordinated, says Dr. Petersilia.
So, is our prison system beyond help? It could be helped if steps are taken now. But we must realize, as Dr. Petersilia warns, “Those who have studied what it takes to successfully reform public institutions say three things are necessary: resources, commitment, and time — with time being the most important.” She cites other sources, who say it takes five to eight years “to accomplish observable reform.” Let not this be cause for inattention. We must demand observable progress all along the way.
As I began my research for this article, I thought that my conclusion would focus on the need for a culture change within the prisons and prison management. I still believe that will be a pivotal step. However, I now can see that another crucial culture change is necessary first: We California voters must change our culture if we want an effective criminal justice/corrections system!
1. We can no longer turn a blind eye to politically motivated policy setting, and we can no longer vote based on fear-based rhetoric!
2. We can no longer be fooled into thinking that more prisons will deter crime!
3. We can no longer allow the prison system to be used for profit by business, by labor, and by the very government that claims to support its mission!
Concerned Californians, speak out now and unite behind trustworthy leaders who support true prison reform!
Barbara Christie is a native Californian, freelance writer, and advocate for human rights, restorative justice, and prison reform.
