Pubdate: Wed, 24 Mar 2010
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2010 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Denis C. Theriault

CALIFORNIA FINDS THAT PRISON COSTS AREN'T SO EASY TO CUT

SACRAMENTO - The billions of dollars that California pours into its 
troubled prisons - a number fattened by court-ordered medical spending and 
sky-high personnel costs - have become an increasingly attractive target 
for leaders desperate to trim the state's $20 billion deficit.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January called for a constitutional amendment 
that would cap prison spending and put the savings toward public 
universities. And since last summer, lawmakers have tried to wring more 
than $2 billion from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, once 
budgeted for $10 billion.

But despite officials' attempts to clamp down after watching costs double 
over the past decade, some corrections spending is proving impervious to 
the budget ax.

Already, hundreds of millions in expected savings have failed to 
materialize, partly because one big expense - more than $1.5 billion for 
inmate medical care this year - is under the watch of a federal receiver, 
not the state.

It's also because some legislators, fearing the "soft on crime" sobriquet, 
balked at cost-saving measures last year that might have released thousands 
of the state's 160,000 inmates. That alone, the Department of Finance says, 
has cost nearly $600 million.

Lawmakers' Dilemma

And more than two-thirds of the department's budget goes to thousands of 
correctional officers earning salaries locked in during California's last 
boom. The state must employ all those officers because of tough sentencing 
laws that increased the inmate population more than fivefold over the past 
20 years.

The challenges only add to a portrait of crisis for California's prison 
system, beset by high recidivism rates and dilapidated facilities.

Paul Golaszewski of the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, which 
advises the Legislature on fiscal and policy issues, says reducing the 
number of inmates or taking a tougher stand on corrections salaries could 
save millions, "but they would require difficult policy decisions."

Whether lawmakers are willing to make those decisions is uncertain. While 
the concept of slashing prison spending is popular with voters, the outcome 
of those cuts - more inmates leaving custody, fewer parole agents and 
loosened sentencing rules - is far less so.

Lawmakers also may have to answer to the politically powerful California 
Correctional Peace Officers Association. The union typically has opposed 
measures to reduce the inmate population, since fewer inmates would require 
fewer officers to guard them.

Instead, some experts suggest that the state's best hope for achieving 
corrections cuts might come from the courts that have tied the state's 
hands on medical care.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson - the same judge who in 
2006 seized control of the prison health care system - and two other 
federal judges ruled that the state's 33 prisons were so inhumanely crowded 
that they violated inmates' constitutional rights. Some facilities are at 
triple their intended capacity.

The judges ordered the state to draw up a plan for releasing up to 40,000 
inmates over the next two years - about a quarter of the state's prison 
population. With California's annual cost per inmate topping $40,000, far 
more than any other state, a reduction the size the judges have ordered 
could save billions of dollars.

Plan For Reductions

The Schwarzenegger administration, backed by outraged legislators from both 
sides of the political aisle, has appealed that order to the U.S. Supreme 
Court, arguing that federal judges have no right to interfere in the 
state's business.

But the state also has submitted a plan for the reductions in case it 
loses. It would make use of private prisons, build new facilities and send 
some inmates to states where incarceration costs are cheaper.

Moreover, the plan would include some of the provisions the Assembly 
resisted last year ­ for example, shifting low-threat inmates into county 
jails. (Many local officials have decried that proposal, saying it would 
only push costs onto them.)

Even without those elements, California is projected to shed some 27,000 
inmates by next summer. Gordon Hinkle, a spokesman for the Corrections 
Department, said changes the Legislature made to the state's parole system 
in September, minimizing technical offenses and focusing agents on 
high-risk parolees, will save $500 million.

Other reductions, like issuing layoff notices to several hundred prison 
teachers and restructuring rehabilitation programs, have been unpleasant 
but necessary, Hinkle said.

Health Care Costs

And though health care is under the domain of a court-appointed receiver, 
that hasn't stopped officials from trying to whittle costs. Health care 
over the past five years had been the fastest-growing piece of the prisons 
budget, more than doubling to $2 billion by 2008-09.

Lawmakers have targeted $811 million in cuts starting this summer, but the 
federal receiver, J. Clark Kelso, has submitted plans calling for about 
half that amount. He has proposed granting medical parole for terminally 
ill inmates, increasing use of telemedicine and establishing a central 
prison pharmacy ­ all to avoid sending inmates to outside hospitals, where 
corrections officers guarding them often earn overtime pay.

"This is a massive overhaul of a very large system," said Luis Patiņo, 
Kelso's spokesman.

"It can't be done overnight, and it can't be done on a dime."
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