Governor Jerry Brown, California's prison crisis is not over

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/10/governor-jerry-brown-california-prison-crisis

Version 0 of 1.

On Monday of this week, Governor Jerry Brown of California made the surprise announcement that the prison emergency in the state of California is finally over and he vowed to fight in court "for as long as it takes" to rid the state of the "nit-picky" and "heavy-handed" intrusion of the federal government into its prison affairs. The California prison system is "one of the finest prison systems in the United States" and requires no further federal government interference, the governor said.

Brown's announcement is fantastic news for the California taxpayer, who has had to spend billions of dollars to fund the state's overcrowded prisons, which, only a few years ago, were declared to be the most dysfunctional and inhumane in the country. Except for the small caveat that it isn't true: the emergency is far from over.

The state of emergency that Brown has now decided is over was declared in 2006 by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. At that time, California's 33 prisons were operating at approximately 180% capacity. Shocking photos appeared in the media showing inmates camped out in the prisons gymnasiums or any other available space, sleeping on bunk beds that were 3-4ft high and barely 1ft apart.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that imposing living conditions on prisoners that would set a battery hen on edge might have something to do with the chronic violence in California's prison yards or the high levels of gang affiliations in jail. In addition to the overcrowding problem, medical care for prisoners was so appalling that at least one prisoner a week was dying each week.

Several lawsuits had been filed on behalf of the prisoners dating back to the early 1990s protesting these unacceptable conditions, which finally culminated in a federal mandate in 2009 to reduce overcrowding to "only" 137.5% of capacity. Around the same time, a federal receiver took over the prison's healthcare system. (The state fought the mandate all the way up to the US supreme court, but the ruling was upheld in May of 2011.)

It would be great to be able to report that since then all these problems are now a thing of the past, as the governor seems to think, but this is so far from being the case that the Brown's declaration is baffling, to say the least, and has left many prisoner advocates in the state more than a little disappointed. According to Will Matthews of the ACLU:

"When the federal government issued that mandate, there was a lot of hope that California, partly by choice and partly under pressure, would become a leader in criminal justice reform. But frankly, given the state's filing on Monday night and the governor's combative declaration, those hopes are now dashed."

Some progress has been made since the initial state of emergency was declared. The state prisons are now operating at the reduced rate of 150% capacity – which, apparently, is something to cheer about. Much of this reduction in numbers is due to realignment (pdf), however, meaning that many low-level and low-risk offenders have been shifted out of the state prison system and into the county jails instead.

While it's certainly cheaper for the state to have the counties pick up the tab for their excess prisoners, this strategy fails to address the systemic problems that caused the overcrowding in the first place. It should also be noted that many prisons, including the Valley State Prison for Women, are still operating at 180% capacity.

Ultimately, the state needs to drastically overhaul its sentencing laws, which continue to allow offenders to be sentenced to outrageously long prison terms that have little bearing on the offense committed. The only real sentencing reform that has taken place since the federal mandate was issued was the recent tweaking of the "three strikes" law. Only offenders who commit a serious or violent felony can be sent to prison for life under the revised law. This is a step in the right direction, but it's only a baby step. I've written previously about a 25-year-old man with a drug addiction who was sentenced under three strikes to 70 years for burglary. His sentence was recently upheld on appeal and he will not be eligible for any reduction under the three strikes modification because burglary counts as a serious felony.

In the meantime, there is plenty of scope to reduce current prison populations – so long as politicians' egos do not get in the way. Prison reform advocates have long been arguing for low-level offenders to be placed under community supervision or released early with GPS monitoring, if necessary. Using its own risk assessment tool (pdf), the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has identified 43% of the prison population as low risk. In order to meet the June 2013 deadline to reduce the prison population to the federally mandated level of 137.5% capacity, the CDCR has proposed granting early releases to these low-risk prisoners.

"We can't pour more and more dollars down the rat hole of incarceration," the governor said during his speech on Monday. Yes, and if he truly wants to stop wasting tax payer dollars on unnecessary incarceration, he should forget about picking fights with the federal government and focus instead on bringing about honest and much-needed change to his state's criminal justice system.