December 11, 2009 -- Orange County Register (CA) CA: Excess, Deprivation Mark State Prisons By Brian Joseph And Tony Saavedra, Orange County Register

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Original: http://www.ocregister.com/news/-223376--.html

In the second of our four-part series on the cost and consequences of California's tough-on-crime mindset, we look at the systemic problems in our prisons. Click here to read the first part, in which we show how concerns over public safety have given power and wealth to the state's law enforcement community.

For 20 years, the gymnasium at San Quentin has served as overflow housing for the residents of California's most notorious prison.

Beneath rimless backboards, more than 300 inmates pass the time playing cards or working out among the long rows of metal bunks that crowd the gym. San Quentin is home to California's Death Row and some of its most dangerous criminals.

California's decades-long obsession with public safety has tied the hands of budget-makers who want to spend more on education and social services -- and has given power, influence and wealth to the state's law enforcement community.

This is the second of four-parts examing the consequences of our state's tough-on-crime mindset:

* California has the most expensive prison system in the nation, but no proof that it makes us safer. More than $8 billion a year is spent on a system plagued by outdated policies, severe overcrowding and a high recidivism rate. Efforts to reform the system are attacked as "soft on crime."

* State and local governments are buckling under the weight of generous public safety pensions, given to police, firefighters and prison guards without sufficient examination of future costs. Pensions have driven one city to bankruptcy; others fear they are headed that way.

* California is more protective of its police than any state in the nation. Public safety lobbies have secured laws that keep police disciplinary records secret, making it almost impossible to publicly identify offending officers and determine whether they are being adequately punished.

Meanwhile, the California Dream has crumbled.

California has the highest general sales tax in the nation, the fourth highest individual income tax rate and the highest corporate income tax rate in the West, but spending per K-12 student is 25th out the nation's 50 states. California roads are among the worst in the nation, with 2/3 rating mediocre to poor, fourth worst in the country. "Did California decide to be safe instead of smart?" asked Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton. "We've made a lot of decisions without examining the factual basis for them."

But the most difficult post for the prison guards is the gymnasium, which houses murderers, parole violators and all manner of criminals in between.

Only four guards are assigned to the gymnasium at any given time; they watch from an elevated platform at one end of the floor. Traveling between the bunks, especially at the end of the gym, you are putting your life into the hands of bored criminals. The inmates are so close you can smell their sweat and stale breath.

"They got all these people in here and only two sinks work," complains Richard Ferguson, a ripped 46-year-old with tattoos on his arms and no front teeth. Ferguson is in San Quentin for violating his parole after he served time for battery on a police officer. He also served time for two counts of resisting a peace officer and for domestic violence.

"We ain't living good," agrees Richard Howlan, 43, who was convicted of drug possession and is serving time on a parole violation. Howlan says there's mold growing on the wall near his bunk. "I've been sick as a dog for three weeks," he said.

And yet, San Quentin is part of the largest and most expensive state prison system in the country. California's commitment to the tough-on-crime mentality has led to a prison system so large that it's become untenable. Our only options now are to spend even more, or reform our justice system.

Change, however, has been virtually impossible because the prison issue is so politically charged. Any reform proposal, no matter how innocuous, risks the dreaded soft-on-crime label. Few lawmakers will support such proposals -- even if it means perpetuating a flawed system.

"You're keeping me for years for having four tablets of Tylenol with codeine," said James Banlaki, 44, sitting in his cell at Donovan prison in San Diego County.

Indeed, Banlaki's record shows the Tylenol was part of the reason he was returned to prison in August. Corrections spokeswoman Maria Franco said he had other parole violations as well-plus previous convictions for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon.

If nothing else, he's a pretty good example of California's failed correctional system.

California Dream

Fifty years ago, California was a promised land where workers could find jobs and their children a state-paid higher education.

Today, it's not quite like that anymore.

Prisons have replaced the university as the state institution of priority. This fiscal year, the state General Fund plans to spend $8.2 billion on corrections -- $3 billion more than what's budgeted for the University of California and California State University systems combined.

In fact, California spends more per capita on its prisons than any state of comparable population. In 2007, California devoted nearly $280 to corrections for every man, woman and child in the state. New York spent $191 per resident.

From 1999 to 2007, California spent more than $60 billion incarcerating the state's worst criminals. Over that time, Texas spent $22 billion. New York, $28 billion.

And California did see an improvement. Between 1999 and 2008, the violent crime rate here dropped nearly 20 percent, outpacing five of the eight largest states and the US as a whole, which saw a drop of 13 percent. Only two of the large states had a larger drop in violent crime -- New York (32 percent) and Illinois (28 percent).

But California has not become much safer relative to other states.

In 1999, California had the third worst violent crime rate (627 violent crimes per 100,000 residents) among those eight large states. In 2008, it had the fourth worst rate (504 crimes per 100,000). In both years, California's crime was well above the overall US rate, which was 523 per 100,000 in 1999 and 455 per 100,000 in 2008.

Why hasn't all that money made a bigger difference?

The Orange County Register's examination of California's prisons found a system riddled with policies that were designed to maintain a tough on crime appearance or reward public safety workers, but sometimes have the opposite effect:

* California is one of only two states (the other being Illinois) to require all inmates to serve a period of parole upon release, regardless of the risk they pose to society. This means that a parole officer's time and resources are frequently diverted from the truly dangerous to those who are less likely to re-offend, like a nonviolent but mentally ill parolee or a woman who killed her abusive boyfriend. According to state figures, 10.5 percent of the state's prison population is there for a parole violation.

* California's Determinate Sentencing Law, which stipulates the precise sentence for every crime, doesn't allow the state to keep its most dangerous inmates in prison longer. Other systems manage that with indeterminate sentencing laws, which allow judges to offer shorter sentences and parole to inmates who work to change their lives. Under California's system, there's little incentive for criminals to reform -- they'll be released no matter what.

* California's tough version of "Three Strikes" requires the law to be enforced unfairly. Two criminals who commit the same crimes can receive dramatically different sentences under Three Strikes, based on the sequence of their crimes. That's because some crimes don't count as first or second strikes, but are counted as third strikes. So someone who commits a theft and two burglaries, in that order, faces a sentence of 10 to 18 years while a criminal who commits two burglaries and then a theft faces 25 to life.

According to figures released by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 70 percent of California inmates are rearrested within three years of their release from state prison.

"We cannot reduce recidivism unless programs are funded that open up opportunities for ex-convicts to create alternatives to a criminal lifestyle," wrote Stanford's Joan Petersilia, an expert on California prisons, in 2008.

"Few inmates leaving California prisons today have participated in education, substance abuse, or vocational training, almost guaranteeing their failure after release."

Public Safety Lobby

Among all 50 states, California's violent crime rate consistently ranked among the top 15 in the nine years ending in 2007. For property crimes, California consistently ranked among the top 35. In 2007, California reported about 191,000 violent crimes. Texas, with 13 million less people, reported about 122,000.

Is that a good comparison? It's virtually impossible to know. Academics who study prisons say there are simply too many variables to judge whether California's investment in 33 prisons, nine juvenile facilities and 36,000 correctional peace officers has actually translated into safer streets.

Over the past few decades, Californians have consistently thrown their support behind tough-on-crime polices. In the current fiscal year alone, public safety spending will consume $13.5 billion -- 11 percent of the state's total budget.

But the system we have today isn't even good enough.

Three years ago, the federal government took over California's prison health system after a judge ruled that its prison health care constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment." Today, a three-judge panel is calling for the state to release as many as 57,000 inmates to alleviate overcrowding.

"It's not that we're not spending enough," says Jean Ross, executive director of the nonpartisan California Budget Project, which analyzes state spending. She says the problem is where we're spending it. And politics can get in the way of spending it wisely.

The broad public support for anti-crime efforts has translated into tremendous power and influence to any interest group that can reasonably position itself as providing public safety.

Consider the state's prison guard union, the California Correctional Peace Officer Association.

On its Web site and its literature, the union declares that its members "walk the Toughest Beat in the State."

California's prison guards also receive the highest salary and benefits in the nation. Their union is one of the wealthiest and most powerful political organizations in the state. Its 33,000 members contribute more than $25 million in dues each year.

Petersilia, the Stanford prison expert, says that by virtue of its political rhetoric and money, the CCPOA "has been more successful than any other correctional union in the nation at winning benefits for its members."

In "California's Correctional Paradox of Excess and Deprivation," a book chapter Petersilia wrote in 2008, she estimated that 70 percent of the state's prison budget goes to staff salaries and benefits. Those high costs impact California's ability to devote more resources to rehabilitation, which she attributes to California's high rate of recidivism.

The prison union agrees with Petersilia's conclusions, but says you can't blame its members for the state's limited investment in rehabilitation. Union spokesman Lance Corcoran said that the state needs to offer prison guards competitive salaries and benefits in order to attract good employees. (See chart of how much public safety groups have spent on political lobbying in California).

"We're in competition with a myriad of different agencies at the state and local level to try to get folks to come to a not very glamorous job," he said.

So instead of cutting the salary and benefits of prison guards, Corcoran said the state should focus its remaining resources on trying to rehabilitate only those criminals who actually want to change their lives. Anyone who doesn't want to change is a lost cause, he said, and should remain in prison.

"Write them off," Corcoran said.

Matt Gray, lobbyist and executive director of Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety, said the public is uninformed about corrections issues. He said special interest groups, like the prison guard union, rely on the politics of public safety to convince lawmakers and voters into seeing things their way.

Instead of relying on data or studies to back up their positions, public safety groups paint grim pictures of criminals running in the streets. That's a powerful argument. Nobody supports crimes.

"It's a culture of fear," Gray said. You seemingly can kill any prison reform plan by simply calling it soft on crime. ... "I equate it to yelling 'Fire!' in a theater."

Prisoners, Crime Down In New York

When it comes to prison policies, it's difficult to compare states -- the differences are just enough to throw off any analysis. In Pennsylvania, for example, inmates serve their time in local jails unless the sentence is two years or longer. In California, the cut off is one year. In Florida, where tourism is big, economic conditions are different than those in Ohio, where manufacturing is important.

But even with those caveats, New York offers a stark contrast to California. Over the last several years, New York has increased its spending per inmate while at the same time decreasing its prison population. Meanwhile, the state's crime rate has gone down. (See comparison charts)

"I don't think anybody can say with absolute certainty that our prison policy has accounted for (a specific) percentage of the drop in the crime rate," said Erik Kriss, spokesman for the New York Department of Correctional Services. "But we do think we're trying to do the right thing here."

Kriss said New York has made it a priority to protect rehabilitation programs in these tough economic times. The state has implemented a "graduated sanctions" policy for parolees, which offers alternative penalties, instead of additional prison time, for less-serious parole violations.

In addition, New York has adjusted its sentencing laws so that prisons hold only the most serious offenders. Kriss noted that the number of violent felons in New York prisons has remained fairly constant. It's just that the percentage of violent felons in the prison population has increased.

"I think there has been a recognition in New York that long prison sentences aren't the answer for a lot of nonviolent prisoners," Kriss said. "The (Correctional Services) Commissioner likes to say, 'We're keeping the right people in prison.'"

Today, California officials are fighting the federal judges who want the state to decrease its prison population. Some, like the governor, say the judges are demanding that the state reduce its prison population too quickly. Others oppose any proposal that would result in criminals going home earlier than they would under current law.

"Sending thousands and thousands of inmates home in an early release line-up places California families in grave danger," said Orange County State Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, when the Senate originally approved the prison reform package. "There is no doubt that the state's prison system is collapsing, but there are more reasonable and responsible ways in which to save money."

New York's strategy might work in California. It might not. But in today's political climate, it's unclear whether state leaders would even seriously consider it.

"There may be ways of reducing the prison population without being soft on crime. There are ways to rethink these situations," said Bert Useem, a prison expert at Purdue University.

"There's nothing soft on crime in New York. But they have done a rethinking. Perhaps California could benefit from a rethinking as well."

Also visit our "Prison and Police Abuse" section.

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