Legal Commentary

A California Cap on Prison Nation?

By TChris

Here's the problem:

California's 33 adult prisons were designed for roughly 100,000 inmates but currently hold 159,000. Inmate advocacy groups say the crowding has led to numerous problems, including neglectful health care and poor mental health treatment.

Here's the proposed solution being negotiated to settle litigation commenced by inmate advocates:

Under the proposed settlement, 27,000 inmates would be released before serving their full sentences and a population cap would be set in place.

Here's the Republican alternative: [more ...]

Republican state lawmaker who have intervened in the lawsuit will reject any settlement that includes a prison cap formula, said state Sen. George Runner. He said Republicans agree that crowding needs to be reduced but believe it can be done by adding nearly 38,000 new prison and county jail cells through a building program approved by the Legislature last year.

In other words, a further expansion of Prison Nation. This strikes California Republicans as preferable to sensible alternatives to incarceration. The money spent on prison construction could be used instead to hire a legion of parole officers.

Prison Nation is the preferred solution of the powerful union that represents California's correctional officers, and so it attracts politicians from both parties. Plus, it's never hurt in past elections to posture as tough on crime. Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty and often try to outdo each other.

California politicians, on the other hand, are unwilling to pay the political price of bankrupting the state to show their toughness. They've tried to run Prison Nation on the cheap, a plan that hasn't worked.

[A] federal receiver is seeking $7 billion in state money to add 10,000 hospital and mental health beds.

Maybe this is the year voters will wake up and demand that politicians be smart on crime.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 21, 2008 (boomark / email).