Pubdate: Sun, 11 Aug 2013
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

CALIFORNIA'S CONTINUING PRISON CRISIS

California has long been held up as the land of innovation and fresh
starts, but on criminal justice and incarceration, the Golden State
remains stubbornly behind the curve.

Over the past quarter-century, multiple lawsuits have challenged
California's state prisons as dangerously overcrowded. In 2011, the
United States Supreme Court found that the overcrowding had gotten so
bad - close to double the prisons' designed capacity - that inmates'
health and safety were unconstitutionally compromised. The court
ordered the state to reduce its prison population by tens of thousands
of inmates, to 110,000, or to 137.5 percent of capacity.

In January, the number of inmates was down to about 120,000, and Gov.
Jerry Brown declared that "the prison emergency is over in
California." He implored the Supreme Court to delay a federal court
order to release nearly 10,000 more inmates. On Aug. 2, the court said
no. Over the furious dissent of Justice Antonin Scalia, who reiterated
his warning two years ago of "the terrible things sure to happen as a
consequence of this outrageous order," six members of the court stood
by its earlier ruling. California has to meet its goal by the end of
2013.

The state claims that releasing any more inmates would be a threat to
public safety, as if the problem were too little prison space. In
fact, California's problem is not excessive crime, but excessive punishment.

This was obvious years before the Supreme Court weighed in. Since the
mid-1970s, California's prison population has grown by 750 percent,
driven by sentencing laws based largely on fear, ignorance and
vengeance. The state's notorious three-strikes law, passed in 1994, is
only the most well-known example. Because of it, 9,000 offenders are
serving life in prison, including many whose "third strike" was a
nonserious, nonviolent offense - in one case, attempting to steal a
pair of work gloves from a Home Depot.

Californians have made clear that they no longer accept traditional
justifications for extreme sentencing. Last November, voters
overwhelmingly passed Proposition 36, which restricted the use of the
three-strikes law for nonviolent offenses, even for current prisoners.
It wasn't just about saving money; exit polls showed that nearly
three-quarters of those who supported the proposition said they felt
the law was too harsh.

The measure has already resulted in the release of around 900
prisoners whose third strike was neither serious nor violent, and it
could lead to the release of up to 2,500 more. A risk assessment by
California's corrections department suggests that these three-strikes
inmates are among the least likely to re-offend. Preliminary research
on those who have been released under Proposition 36 is bearing that
out.

In addition, the state has begun to take steps to repair what former
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described as a prison system "collapsing
under its own weight." A two-year-old package of reforms, enacted into
law and known as "realignment," is changing the type of sentences
prisoners receive, where they are housed and the sort of post-release
supervision they get. While this has led to some important
improvements, such as eliminating prison terms for technical parole
violations, it does not adequately address many entrenched problems,
like disproportionately long sentences, that add to prison
overcrowding. (Nor does it deal with the widespread use of long-term
solitary confinement, which has led hundreds of state prisoners to go
on hunger strikes in recent months.)

If California wants to avoid another legal battle over its overcrowded
prisons, there are two things it can do right away.

First, it should establish a sentencing commission to bring
consistency, proportionality and data-based assessments to its laws.
Twenty-one states, the District of Columbia and the federal government
already have such commissions, and they make a difference. In Virginia
and North Carolina, both of which had prison overcrowding, sentencing
commissions helped focus scarce resources on housing the most violent
offenders, limiting prison growth without jeopardizing public safety.

Criminal justice reform advocates have unsuccessfully pushed for such
a commission in California. If the state is to get away from its
irrational and complicated sentencing, it needs a commission, and it
needs to insulate it as much as possible from the political actors who
have contributed so much to the state's current crisis.

Second, the state must do more to help released prisoners get the
re-entry and rehabilitation services that already exist across
California. Inmates are often released with no warning to friends or
family, with no money, no means of transportation and no clothes other
than the jumpsuits on their backs. It is no wonder a 2012 report
showed that 47 percent of California prisoners returned to prison
within a year of their release, a significantly higher rate than the
national average.

People coming out of prison need many things, but the critical ones
are safe housing, drug treatment and job opportunities. Theoretically,
the $2 billion being spent over the first two years of realignment was
to provide more resources toward such re-entry and rehabilitation
programs; in reality, much of that money has gone to county jails,
which have seen their own overcrowding only get worse as they have
absorbed thousands of inmates from state prisons. So far, counties
have allocated an average of just 12 percent of their realignment
funds to re-entry programs.

California's prison population is consistently among the largest in
the country. While it presents an extreme case, its problems are
representative of what is happening in prisons and jails in other
states. If California would redirect its energy from battling the
federal courts to making the needed long-term reforms, it could once
again call itself a leader.
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MAP posted-by: Matt