Editor’s note: This is a transcript of what Don Perata said on the floor of the California State Senate as that body was debating the prison construction program that was later passed and sent to the Governor.
To get the full tenor of the speech, you have to listen to it, and it is available here, online. Perata’s speech was forceful and includes a thoughtful history of how we got into the current prison mess, the shortcomings of the legislation before the house, and his skepticism about how the bill will be implemented and its effects.
PRESIDENT PRO TEM DON PERATA: Thank you, Madam President. In consideration of all that’s been said and in appreciation for many others who have some very strong views that are not going to express them this morning, let me endeavor to just say on behalf of my caucus, where we are.
There’s not a Democrat here this morning that likes this vote, that likes this bill. Those who vote for it vote with grave reservations. Why we’re doing it and why we’re doing it today? Because we’ve been told by the Governor that unless we have given him some authority for a 10-year plan to get us out of the quagmire that we’re in with our Corrections system, he believes that the federal courts will take over and place in receivership the entire system of our prisons, and that the population reduction would be done by a magistrate, not by anyone here. That’s the reason that we’re here today. No other reason.
So we have basically making a bad problem arguably better. I don’t know that it could get any worse. I know there’s divided opinion. Maybe we should give it to the federal courts. Well, we didn’t get elected to turn stuff over to the federal government. That’s not our job. If we want to talk about the failures of the federal government to California, we wouldn’t start with this one. We’d go right back to the very basic beginning and end of life issues. That’s not, we weren’t elected to Congress. If we want to do that, have a good time. We’re here today. We have to make a decision.
In terms of the process, if anybody believes that this is a new issue, you’ve been sleeping through class all semester. Mike Machado and Sub 4 have been going hammer and nail on this issue all year long. And what we found out is, if we don’t do something right now responsive to the federal receiver and responsive to a couple of other federal judges, we won’t have to worry about a lot—we’ll just have to—you think you’re writing big checks now? Wait until you write one at the direction of the federal government and you say you’re not going to do it and they say, “Oh, yeah?” We’ve already had—we’ve been threatened already.
Second, we are not giving the Governor or anybody else a blank check. He has the authority, the authorization. Everything has to come back through the Budget Committee. And the second phase of this bill is prescriptive, probably far more than any other bill you’ll see, because we had the repel, the instinct to cross the line and get into the management of the Corrections system. It is so mismanaged today, it is so replete with incompetence and incapability that the natural tendency when you know anything is to say, “Dammit, I know more than they do. Let me fix it.” So half of what we had to do is fight off the urge to go in and do a job that legislators are not elected to do.
What we did do is put into the second phase of this bill every single thing that we believe has to be done for us to really reduce our population and stop recidivism. And that is we have to begin to redo real programs. We can’t make programs those things that come if we have enough money. If we don’t begin to rehabilitate, and I challenge every Bible reading member of this floor to look at redemption, forgiveness and redemption. Many of these people who are in prison, you’ll never want to see out again on the streets. We know that. But, a whole lot of people are coming out of my district, coming out of East Los Angeles, people who have had the bottom cards dealt to them their whole lives. This may be the only chance they have. We’re stupid not to give it to them. Fiscally irresponsible not to give it to them, forgetting the morality, because we don’t want to get into that, of course.
We are overcrowded and understaffed. I don’t know how the Governor’s going to pull this off, but I sure think we can sell tickets to watch. We are down 4,000 Correctional officers. Four thousand. I would, and I commend my colleagues who go to the prisons to check things out. I wouldn’t do that. Nobody’s there to protect me. Four thousand. And that’s just down now. In Sub 4 and in the Rules Committee we constantly see people talking to us about programs, what our needs are. The Correction Department is going to build infill beds, which really means they’re going to build extensions of prisons, themselves. They are 300 positions down. So we’re going to go out and order the lumber while we see if we can find a carpenter. Now I don’t know how they’re going to do that.
We have 177,000 inmates in our prison system. We have 1,300 teachers. I told them they ought to go to the CTA and have them help on class size reduction. Thirteen hundred teachers for 177,000 inmates. So the list goes on. It is no wonder that we loaded this bill up with you come back and tell us how successful you’ve been. I must say that this tests any article of faith that I’ve ever been associated with. I do not, as I stand here, believe that this job can get done. It hasn’t gotten done. We were having this conversation, substantially the same, last year. We have not built anything. The one thing that they did try to build, a death chamber, they couldn’t get done, even when they did it without letting anybody know they were doing it, because they wanted to do it for $400,000.
You’ve been around government long enough. What can you build for $400,000? You can barely get a toilet seat cover for $400,000. Now they’re over budget and they’re surprised. And the head of the prison system said, “Jeez, I didn’t even know we were doing it.”
Well, this instills mammoth amount of confidence. So if we cannot staff up, this will not be a success. And you know what we’re finding out? Federal receiver comes in, starts mandating changes in health and mental health. You know where those people come from to work there? Right out of the counties. Right out of the other sectors. So there, we are bleeding counties out and part of this plan is, of course, to return these people to the counties. You tell me how that works.
Now, I didn’t learn that by reading this bill. I learned that by listening and watching and asking people questions and listening to a lot of members in this floor, Republicans and Democrats who’ve asked the hard questions. And the questions all seem to be rhetorical, because there are no answers. I’ll tell you one thing, though, that I know for sure. Californians, in the last 25 years, have wanted to put people in prison. Prisons were going to make us safe. Prisons, somehow, it’s going to make those that have safe from those that don’t. But, not a damn person ever thought about voting for enhancement or a new crime and asked the question, “What’s it going to cost?” We didn’t care. We could go back, thump our chest, say, “Hey, we’re doing this.” If somebody found an opportunity to take something to the ballot and have the voters pass something without regard to cost, we did it. So we’re jammed up in this situation right now because we have fallen in love with one of the most undocumented, nonevidentiary beliefs. And that is somehow you get safer if you put more people in jail.
So we are all indicted here today, but we did not cause this problem. Gray Davis had as much to do with this as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gray Davis, you’ll notice, is no longer governor. Arnold Schwarzenegger is. Doesn’t matter if he’s Republican or Democrat. This knows no partisanship.
The last plea I make, however, it is impossible for me to fathom, to understand for a second how we expect any of this to work without labor peace in our prisons. How in the world can we expect with the turmoil that we’re talking about here today with the absence of direction, with the lack of leadership, how can we ask somebody to walk a tier and feel good about the prospects of going home and kissing their kids? I will say again, I would not go into a prison in this state in the conditions that we’re with right now and what I know. I may be a girly man, but I ain’t stupid.
So what I’m asking all of us, and I’m asking the Governor is that we must solve the labor problem now. We must get the accord and the peace that we need. We need these men and women, not only those who are guards, but those who provide all services to these inmates. We have to create a peace. Absent that, I think a judge would see right though this, ought to say good luck. You’re building, but you’re not going to be able to manage. You’re going to have lots of inmates, but you’re not going to have anybody competent, qualified, or enough of them to be the custodial agents that we expect.
So it’s a lousy vote. There’s no question about it. We should have never been put in this position. And for everybody that’s voted for a sentence enhancement or a new crime, we’ve all contributed to that, myself included. But, we are going to pass this here today, because there, it will not get better with time. If there is any more that needs to be known than what we know right now, it could only get worse, not better. So the Governor will have today on his desk the authority to do what he said he needs to do to get back in control of our prison system.
Time will tell. I ask for an “aye” vote.
