Pubdate: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 2009 San Jose Mercury News Contact: http://www.mercurynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3904 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing) TO SAVE MONEY, CUT CALIFORNIA'S PRISON POPULATION There are good reasons to be upset with the state budget that the Legislature will vote on today. The proposal to reduce the number of inmates in state prisons to save $1.2 billion is not one of them. But that's what's bothering Republican lawmakers. Assembly Republican leader Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo threatened to kill the budget if it included what he and others mischaracterized as the early release of 27,000 prisoners. The crisis was averted Wednesday when legislative leaders agreed to keep the savings in the budget, then vote separately next month on how to achieve them. But Blakeslee's threat was added evidence why voters must get rid of the requirement for a two-thirds majority to pass the state budget. It empowers a tyrannical minority. The Department of Corrections consumes 10 percent of the general fund, nearly as much as higher education. That in itself is criminal. Many of Schwarzenegger's and Democrats' ideas to reduce prison crowding are what reformers have advocated for years: # Transferring sick and aged prisoners to nursing homes, where Medicare would pick up part of the cost. # Crediting time for inmates who earn a high school diploma or vocational certificate, or complete drug treatment. # Ordering home detention of some nonviolent inmates in lieu of final months in prison. # Deporting undocumented felons or transferring them to federal prisons. # Revising parole Advertisement laws to stop sending nonviolent parolees back to prison on technical violations. # Redefining a handful of crimes, including receiving stolen property and writing bad checks, as misdemeanors, with time served in county jails. # Creating a commission to recommend changes in the state's tangled sentencing laws, including mandatory minimums and enhanced penalties, that have piled on costs and filled up prisons. Instead of packing more kindergartners into classrooms, the state should be unpacking its prisons. If not now, with the state facing financial ruin, then when? And if Republicans have other ideas on how to save $1.2 billion, then how? Our bet is there's no way without cutting the number of inmates. Even ending all counseling and vocational programs for inmates "" a crazy idea Schwarzenegger had favored "" would save only $439 million. Blakeslee, a member of the "big five" who cut the deal on the budget, claimed he was surprised and "double-crossed" by the Democrat-Schwarzenegger plan for the prisons. We suspect he got spooked when a lobbyist for the police chiefs association threatened to campaign against any legislator who voted for it. Schwarzenegger and the Democrats have a valid plan to reduce the prison population from 167,000 to 140,000. If legislators don't do it, federal courts overseeing the prisons will order prisoners released in ways nobody will like. The governor and lawmakers will have themselves to blame. Enough grandstanding. Defy the prison-industrial lobby by cutting the prison budget and passing sentencing and parole reforms now. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake