Those who are looking to derail the proposed cuts to California’s corrections budget that I posted about Friday (and that will be decided upon later this month), suggest that these cuts are reckless ideas borne out of budget desperation, and that they will drastically compromise public safety and result in a dangerous crime increase.
However, the truth is quite a different matter.
With the exception of the wrong-headed line item that would cut all non-court mandated rehabilitation programs within California’s prisons, the rest of the proposals—parole reform, downgrading certain felonies to misdemeanors, allowing low-level inmates to earn time off their sentences through participation in education and job training, etc.—are all much needed corrective measures that have been repeatedly suggested by various California state commissions (like the Little Hoover Commission) and governor-appointed Blue Ribbon Committees. But in the past such sensible suggestions have been roundly ignored by a courage-free state legislature too terrified of being labeled soft on crime.
So now the budget crisis may be giving the Democrats (at the very least) and hopefully a few Republicans, enough political cover to begin process of corrections reform that has long been overdue. Let us hope so.
Over the weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an excellent editorial that deals with this very issue.
Here are some clips:
When it comes to California’s broken prison system, the budget crisis may have finally left us with no option other than to do the right thing.
Sacramento has known what the right thing is for years. We must avoid sending so many people to prison, through a combination of rehabilitation, parole reform and changes in our draconian sentencing laws.
For decades, the corrections budget has swallowed more and more of the state’s general fund, starving priorities like higher education. But the political ramifications of looking “soft on crime” cowed legislators and governors alike. So we built prison after prison and stuffed them all to overcapacity.
Now, in a desperate gambit to close the state’s $26.3 billion budget gap, legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed to cut $1.2 billion from the prison budget. Furious Republicans in the Legislature immediately threatened to torpedo the whole thing, claiming that “early releases” could put public safety at risk.
In fact, the governor’s plan would simply push forward important reforms to keep people from going into prison in the first place. These are simple reforms that prison experts have been asking the state to make for years.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation used the 2007 recommendations of the Expert Panel on Adult Offender Reentry Recidivism Reduction, along with recommendations from the 2004 Deukmejian Commission, to craft a package of smart, sensible reforms.
[SNIP]
“There’s a recognition that the population of the state prison systems does need to be reduced, for a variety of reasons,” said association President Bernard Melekian. “This is a dramatic step in the right direction. I think there’s a number of things in this plan that will allow them to do this without jeopardizing public safety.”
It’s sad that it took a financial crisis for California to make these crucial changes to its crumbling prison system. Judges have called our system unconstitutional and ordered us to change it, public education officials have decried the diversion of funds for years – and yet it took an unprecedented financial crisis to get Sacramento to even consider it.
Hey, whatever works.
Read the rest.
PS: The LA Times has a nice editorial in this morning’s paper that makes some of these same points. (Except that, vexingly, the Times persists in using that 27,000 figure in talking about “early release,” stating that they will be “released early and all at once,” which just ain’t true—at least according to the legislative analyst’s office and Seth Unger, the spokesman for the California Department of corrections itself. They also state that, as of now, most California prisoners serve their full sentences. Um…no, they don’t. But, whatever.)