The Continued Defense Of The Indefensible

Timm Herdt was on a conference call yesterday with a top official from the Department of Corrections, and that official acknowledged that the plan due to federal judges by midnight today on prison reduction will not meet the goal:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday will submit to a panel of three federal judges a plan that would reduce the inmate population at California’s overcrowded prisons by substantially less than what the court has ordered, a move that a top prison administrator acknowledged will place state officials at risk of being held in contempt.

Although the final plan will not be submitted until late Friday, administration officials have briefed other parties involved in the court proceedings on its major elements. They said exact projections of how much the prison population will be reduced have not yet been calculated, but the reduction would not lower the population to the court’s standard of 137.5 percent of the prison system’s design capacity.

“This plan will not meet the court’s requirements,” said Lee Seale, deputy chief of staff of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in a conference call Wednesday with legislative staff members. “I certainly don’t think this panel will be thrilled by this plan. I think we recognize we may be held in contempt.”

Under the plan the state will submit, they will get to around 27,000 prisoner reduction. The judges want something close to 44,000.

The question is how the three-judge panel will react. They may mandate a release of enough prisoners to get to that number, at which point the state will challenge the ruling and throw it to the US Supreme Court. This is precisely was Tough on Crime member emeritus George Runner wants.

Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, who has intervened in the court case in the hope of preventing a judicial mandate to lower the prison population, believes the administration is taking exactly the right approach.

“I would like to see the state plan be as easily rejected as possible,” Runner said.

If the administration submitted a plan that came close to meeting the court’s order, Runner said, that could lead to a negotiated compromise. This way, he said, the court will be forced to propose its own plan — one that would set up a showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Where Runner would pitch the "I'm right because I say so" defense. And with this Supreme Court, who knows, that may work.

We don't know when the appeal would come in the process. The Governor's office seem to think that they can appeal the initial ruling as soon as they offer their alternative plan, while others believe that they'd have to wait for the three-judge panel to issue a final order with the full reductions. At some point, everyone agrees, an appeal is allowable. Kevin Yamamura has more.

I don't want to put this entirely on the Governor, though he's clearly dragging his feet. The Assembly forced the weak proposal you'll see from the Governor today by scaling back the reform plan that would have come closer to the judge's goal of reducing the population by 44,000 prisoners. But the Governor didn't actually have to follow the Assembly in submitting their plan. They could have come up with one of their own making, putting pressure on the Legislature to conform it. They chose not to stand behind their own plan and do so. So while there's plenty of blame to go around, I think the Governor needs to own this one, although he and everyone else want to take the blame off themselves.

By the end of the week, it will be apparent what all the posturing accomplished: nothing. That may suit lawmakers just fine -- they can blame the coming prison reforms on the federal courts rather than taking heat from voters for being insufficiently hard on criminals. But the episode is further evidence that if California's prison system is a national disgrace, its Legislature is a national laughingstock.

Perhaps it's not surprising that, in this environment, Schwarzenegger seems to be taking on the characteristics of a dictator. On Tuesday, he rejected the Legislature's plan to promote renewable energy and said he'd impose his own by executive fiat. He's on surer legal ground when it comes to the prisons because his actions will be backed by the federal court. But it's dismaying to watch the state's democratic procedures break down so thoroughly.

As long as he now appears to be king of California, we humbly beseech our lord and Terminator to finally do the right thing by the prisons. His proposal to the court should be modeled on the one approved by the Senate and include a commission to review the unsustainable determinate sentencing system. Meanwhile, it's time to drop the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of the federal court order so we can get on with the business of fixing the prisons and out of the habit of defending the indefensible.

But that's not going to happen. Seeing the Department of Corrections reduce the very rehabilitation programs by $250 million, that even the Assembly plan used as a means to let inmates out for completing them, show how the mission of corrections has been completely lost in this. What the state is fighting by appealing the judge's order is their privilege to let people die in jail needlessly in violation of the Constitution. Today, they will continue to assert that privilege.

Scaled-Back Prison Bill Done, Water Bill Not

Notes from yet another long session in the Legislature:

The Senate could wait no longer for the Assembly to get their act together, so they passed a reduced prison package along the Assembly's lines, one that falls $200 million short of projections and does not have a sentencing commission. The Governor has announced he'll sign the bill. It's marginally worthwhile for the parole reforms, but really nowhere near what's needed. And so the federal judges will in all likelihood order a mass release, and because little is being done to address root causes, the cost of prisons and the population as a whole are both still likely to increase. The cowards in the Assembly who think they have designs on higher office after this travesty should know that this vote will have importance, but not in the way they think.

The bill to waive CEQA requirements (California Environmental Quality Act) to put a football stadium in Southern California - without an NFL team, mind you - did not get by Darrell Steinberg, despite lots of energy and effort from special interests. He's giving the various parties more time to negotiate a settlement. Sports stadiums are among the biggest corporate welfare projects we have in America.

The much-ballyhooed water deal has been scuttled, as Karen Bass announced she did not have the votes to move it. The Speaker may ask for a special session on water, and the Governor would probably move that as well. The middle-of-the-night rush obviously didn't work, so some transparency would be preferable.

Still waiting on the renewable energy standard bill, which would put California in the vanguard of the nation in terms of its portfolio (33% by 2020).

More End-Of-Session Notes

A few end-of-the-session tidbits for you:

• CapAlert reports that Karen Bass will try again to get some of the more spineless members of her caucus to support a prison reform bill better than the scaled-back effort it already passed. Bass talked about adding the "alternative custody" provisions into the bill, which would get it to the proper level of cuts, but not the sentencing commission, which still looks dead, sadly.

• One bill we know to be dead is SB88, which would have forced localities to get permission from the state before going into bankruptcy. This was a union-backed bill to protect their local contracts, but city governments balked. Sen. Mark DeSaulnier says he'll try to broker a compromise for next year. Those bankruptcies are probably right down the pike, so he'd better hurry.

• The bill that the Governor arrogantly vetoed earlier in the week, in a hissy fit because he wasn't getting his way on water or prisons, was a bill to initiate a Vietnam Veteran's memorial day. It was authored by Republican Assemblyman Paul Cook, and he's whipping support to undergo the first legislative veto override in Sacramento in about 30 years, which is truly a sad legacy. Only in California could securing an override on an uncontroversial bill be something that could end a political career, as Cook acknowledged today. An override would be at least a sign of life in the Legislature.

• A lot of rumbling about the water bill, which is being written completely in secrecy, and without the input of politicians who represent the Sacramento Delta. Bass hinted at a bond issue to finance whatever comes out of conference, which would cost $600 million $800 million in debt service annually without any consequent gains in revenue to pay for it.

Could be another long night...

The $3 Million Dollar-A-Day Delay

Despite the assumed end to the prison crisis, there's still no bill to clarify the $1.2 billion dollars in savings assumed from cuts in the July budget. The Assembly passed a bill that fell $200 million dollars short and had almost no prison reform in it (some parole reform, but no prison reform), and the Senate has yet to take that bill up. After word yesterday that the Senate would do so, Darrell Steinberg backed away from it, seeking to give more time to the Assembly to add more reform and more cuts into the bill. Because the bill only requires a majority vote, it takes effect 90 days after passage. Which means that every day with no bill costs the state $3.3 million dollars. This is the consequence of so-called fiscal conservatives in the Yacht Party, as well as their higher-office-seeking bretheren in the Assembly Democratic caucus, wanting to look tough on crime. As the State Worker notes, this delay is taking a daily hit on the savings gained from furloughs:

Here's one way that furloughed state workers could look at this: The CDCR budget impasse is whittling away at savings from furloughs. If you take that $3.3 million and multiply it by the 70 days from July 1 through today, you realize the state has burned through $231 million.

A single furlough day cuts about $61 million from the state's payroll, although not all of that savings is in the general fund. (The rounded math: $2.2 billion divided by 36 furlough days in the fiscal year.) If you narrow it down to just salaries that the administration defines as being in the general fund, one furlough day equals about $35 million. (Double check our rounded numbers: $1.3 billion divided by the 36 furlough days.)

In other words, this budget-stalemate-in-miniature has squandered the equivalent of about four furlough days for everyone or nearly seven furlough days if you look only at general fund employees.

Other states have used smart on crime policies to reduce spending without any loss in public safety. They are taking new looks at non-violent offenders, relaxing draconian sentencing policies, targeting parole resources to those who need supervision and concurrently lowering recidivism rates through rehabilitation. Right now, California has the exact wrong set of policies on prisons.

In fact, California is nationally known "for having the most dysfunctional sentencing and parole system" in the country, according to Stanford University professor Joan Petersilia, a criminologist who has spent years working with state officials trying to implement reforms.

"We're too harsh and too lenient. Simultaneously," Petersilia said.

Our mix of tough laws and fixed terms doesn't give prison officials the flexibility to push low-risk offenders toward rehabilitation and keep dangerous criminals behind bars.

But reform efforts haven't gained public traction because we're too busy trying to keep people behind bars -- with Jessica's Law, Megan's Law, the three-strikes law -- to take a hard look at whether locking up more people actually makes us safer.

"The public doesn't understand how illogical the whole system has become," Petersilia said. "We think that somehow we've created something that is able to call out the most dangerous people, send them to prison and keep them in for a very long time.

"And the public is willing to pay whatever it takes to get that type of crime policy."

I disagree with the last sentence. The public is willing to be frightened into initiatives that do nothing for public safety and just spend money needlessly, because they've seen no leadership on the other side for an alternative conception of how to protect the public sensibly and best manage our cirminal justice system. Nobody has argued in public for a more intelligent system for so long, that the public willingness to believe in its possibility has atrophied. We can keep the lock-em-up policies or we can look to a better future. Either way, we're blowing $3 million a day while some Assembly Democrats go on a desperate search for their spines.

Sorry, Arnie: Federal Judges Reject Stay On Prison Plan

The message from the panel of judges to Sacramento yesterday was, you broke it, you bought it:

Reporting from Sacramento - A panel of federal judges, accusing California officials of obstruction, on Thursday denied the state's request to delay an order to produce a plan for reducing its prison population by 40,000 inmates.

Aides to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said they would take their request to the U.S. Supreme Court today.

The judges issued their order on Aug. 4 in two long-running lawsuits by inmates. The state asked for a delay pending its appeal of the order to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was filed separately Thursday.

In rejecting the state's motion for the delay only two days after it was filed, the judges said they had been "more than patient with the state and its officials" and harshly criticized them for "conflicting representations" in court that have caused the cases to drag on.

It's getting comical at this point. Thelton Henderson initially found California's prison system to violate individual rights in 2005. Over those four years, state officials have resisted, bargained, shouted, and appealed their way into oblivion, trying all along to do as little as possible about the clear crisis. The judges are asking for a plan that essentially mirrors the Senate's version of prison reform working through the legislative process right now. For all the protests about "wasting taxpayer dollars" to come up with a workable plan, the judges are essentially asking for a copy of what's already being done.

The state doesn't want to give them one, because they now it's insufficient to conform with the clear guidelines on reducing the inmate population. And they'd rather appeal and appeal and be forced to respect Constitutional rights than do it themselves. With the taxpayer money and effort spent to studiously ignore this problem, we could have already solved it.

Half A Loaf Is Not Enough On Prison Reform

George Skelton writes about some of the accomplishments on deck in the next week in the Legislature. Beyond the renewable energy standard, which would be a solid accomplishment, and water, which really is kind of an unknown, Skelton looks at the prison "reform" bill, where he is both right and wrong.

The goal is threefold: to reform a system that has the worst-in-the-nation recidivism rate -- 70% -- for inmates released from prison. To begin substantially reducing the overcrowded prison population before federal courts do, as they've threatened. And to save the $1.2-billion already slashed from the prison budget on paper, but not in reality.

There apparently will be no compromising with Republicans. They're having no part of it, playing the law-and-order card as they have for decades -- advocating long lockups but opposing any tax increases to pay for the bulging prisons [...]

One thing that's needed, he and other reformers contend, is more education, drug rehab and job training for inmates. Another is a better parole system. A scaled-down bill passed by the Assembly on Monday seeks to encourage the former and achieve the latter [...]

Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) are trying to restore much of the Senate version, which also included an independent commission to update California's sentencing structure. But their problem is Assembly Democrats. Some are scared of being portrayed as a crime softie by a future campaign opponent. Steinberg took a shot at them Tuesday.

"It's time to say, 'Come on,' " the Senate leader told reporters. "We have a law-and-order Republican governor who is willing to sign a comprehensive package with absolutely essential reforms that protects public safety. It's time to get real [...]

Steinberg and Bass may coax more votes from the skittish Democrats.

But if they can't, the good-time incentives and parole improvements alone would be worth passing. They'd mark substantial progress toward prison reform.

As I've said, the current bill is not a prison reform bill, but a parole reform bill. The education, treatment and job training encouraged is immediately undercut by the Governor's slashing of those programs as part of the deal. And the lack of an independent sentencing commission means that we're likely to see both increased sentencing laws and increases in the prison population continue, and we'll all be back here in 10-15 years.

That said, parole reform IS a key element. Changing the situation where 2/3 of the convicts returned to prison get sentences for technical parole violations is urgently needed. The Phillip Garrido case is an example of how increased case monitoring on the most serious offenders could have benefits for public safety. But it does not totally stand in for full reform. The sentencing commission goes hand-in-hand with fixing parole.

Sentencing commission: In other states, a sentencing commission looks at who is being sent to prison and for how long, and what sentences work best to lower reoffense rates. Sentences are based on the severity of the crime and the offender's prior record. Instead of a system driven by relatively low-level property and drug offenses, prison sentences are focused primarily on violent and career offenders. The result in other states is that fewer offenders go to state prison, but the offenders who do go to prison are serving longer. For lesser crimes, offenders go to county jail.

Skelton only touches on who's really to blame for our intransigence on prison reform - those allegedly fiscally responsible Republicans who refuse to bear the costs of their policy desires. They've joined the appeal of the federal judge order to reduce the population by 44,000 on the grounds that their beautiful minds tell them there's no problem in the system:

State Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster) said the judges had ignored the state’s recent “huge investment” in spending on inmate healthcare, as well as statistics showing that California spends more on healthcare per prisoner, and has a lower mortality rate among them, than many other states.

“We believe there is constitutional care today,” he said. “We believe there always has been.”

If you want the long form of this lie, read Tom Harman. Either way, it's just not true. Inmates have died, around one a week, before a federal receiver was instituted. Republicans fought the implementation of investing in prison health care, and the continued presence of infirm prisoners based on draconian sentencing laws like three strikes can account for the increased costs. Republicans typically call for increased rehabilitation and treatment for offenders while cutting the funding. It's a shell game.

However, we are well beyond that at this point. We have a bill that needs only a majority vote. And Assembly Democrats are petrified of justifying votes they had no problem with as recently as 2007. By the way, opponents can go back to those votes too, and make the same mailers. You either can act like you have the courage of your convictions, or not. Ultimately, the people will pay the price.

Steinberg: Assembly's Prison Effort "Not A Complete Bill"

The Assembly's passage of a prison "reform" bill is not the end of the line for the legislation, as the Senate simply won't accept it in this form.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the reaction in the Senate to the Assembly's low calorie prison bill was muted. Senate Democrats certainly wouldn't have come out and said the plan stinks. But there's no official timetable on a reconciliation vote in the upper house, either.

The official response from Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg came in a written statement: "The Assembly took a good first step today but it’s not a complete package. In the coming weeks, I look forward to working with (Assembly) Speaker Karen Bass and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on further reforms that will strengthen our criminal justice system."

The key phrase in that statement: "In the coming weeks." This one's not going to go away anytime soon.

The main reason is that the Assembly bill costs $233 million more to the overall budget than the Senate's, and that money simply does not exist. It'll eventually come out of the hides of other programs if allowed to let stand. And the Assembly Republicans and Democrats who help up the bill can then explain why it was necessary to keep terminally ill blind people in jail at the expense of children's health care or some other social program.

Steinberg expanded on his dissent from the Assembly bill today, calling the legislature's inability to pass the reforms based on cuts they already passed in July an example of the legislature's "culture of failure". I've been saying that for weeks.

Meanwhile, I'm hearing a lot of reactionaries taking the example of Phillip Garrido, the kidnapper of Jaycee Lee Dugard, and the fact that he only served 10 1/2 years of a 50-year kidnapping sentence in the 1970s, to argue for more stringent parole and prison laws in California. This is the typical Willie Horton-ing of any sane discourse on prison policy. Garrido was convicted of a FEDERAL crime, not a state crime. And that federal parole policy was abolished by 1987. It bears no application to this debate whatsoever, particularly since, under this policy, violent criminals would not be subject to release and would face more stringent parole supervision, as resources would be allocated to those who require it. The failure of parole officers to discover Garrido's deviance demands EXACTLY the kind of parole reform in both the Assembly and Senate bill, so officers have smaller caseloads and can focus on the most dangerous cases instead of returning nonviolent offenders to prison for technical violations.

Meanwhile, the Governor, even while promoting a real reform plan, wants to get a stay from federal judges on implementing the required reduction of 44,000 to the prison population, which even the Senate bill doesn't do. He plans to file an appeal with the US Supreme Court as well, and if the three-judge panel doesn't grant the stay, he'll ask the Supremes to do so.

Sacramento politicians are still in between the "denial" and "bargaining" stage in reacting to their immoral and unconstitutional handling of the prison crisis.

Assembly Readies Prison Vote; Will Senate Fight Back Against Gutted "Reform"?

We've heard this one before, but the Assembly will apparently vote on a prison "reform" package today, one that does not meet the $1.2 billion in cuts to the overall prison budget the Assembly supported in July, and which excises the sentencing commission that would actually get to the root cause of the overcrowding crisis by reining in 30 years of expanded sentences from the Legislature. This makes manly tough guy Alberto Torrico very proud, but the Senate may not go along with it, if this SacBee report is any indication:

If the Assembly approves the plan as expected Monday, Steinberg will withhold concurrence in the Senate until several prison-related issues are settled.

"We're going to wait for a package that includes reform and gets to the budget number that we need," Steinberg said.

Steinberg wants the Assembly to act on creating a commission to overhaul sentencing guidelines and for the lower house to adopt an alternative custody program that could release, with electronic monitoring, some nonviolent offenders who are aged or infirm, or whose sentences expire in less than a year.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports the Senate-passed plan, which contains both the sentencing commission and the alternative custody proposals.

The Assembly plan is a parole reform plan. That's worthwhile and needed, but it's not a long-range plan that will prevent the Legislature or a federal court from having to make the same decisions about early release 10 years down the road. It's also not a short-range plan, as it cuts $220 million less from the budget than is required and leaves that hole to be dealt with later - with cuts to what? Education? Health care? Maybe the Assembly can explain where they would cut in order to keep the terminally ill or blind people with one leg locked up and on the public dole.

It's a sad commentary that the Department of Corrections is more committed to advancing reform than the State Assembly.

Last Thursday, the CDCR announced it would close the largest youth prison in California, diverting young offenders to local facilities. This is one of the real reforms our coalition has called for to improve public safety and end wasteful prison spending. As part of the People’s Budget Fix, we have proposed keeping young offenders at the local level, closing all six of the costly and ineffective youth prisons, and diverting half of the budget currently spent on these prisons to local programs. If fully implemented, this reform would save $200 million a year.

Closing the largest youth prison is an excellent start which will save $30-40 million by the CDCR’s estimate. But we’ll need to do more if we’re going to come up with $1.2 billion in savings. The need for action could not be more urgent: we must find those savings in the Corrections’ budget to avoid more draconian cuts to education, health care and other public safety programs like domestic violence shelters and drug treatment programs.

Moreover, most Californians agree we need to cut wasteful prison spending. Polls show that most Californians think we should cut the Corrections budget and we should protect funding for education. Most Californians also agree that prison should be reserved for violent offenders, not people who commit petty offenses.

Yet, the Assembly cannot agree on what seems like common sense to the rest of us: people who commit low-level crimes like petty theft and simple drug possession should be punished on the local level, not in prison cells at a cost of nearly $50,000 per person per year. It shocks the conscience that Assembly Members were willing to vote for billions of dollars of cuts to education—the most important program to average Californians—but are afraid to cut wasteful prison spending by even a fraction of that.

Interestingly enough, Noreen Evans, the Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, wrote an impassioned piece arguing in favor of the Senate's prison package. As part of the Assembly leadership, she's likely to fall in line today. But she recognizes that the political considerations driving this debate are pretty outrageous. It's hard to argue with Dan Walters' assessment that this episode shows how nobody in the legislature, on either side of the aisle, has earned much of a right to object to the howls and disapprobation from throughout the state. The Senate could lead the way, at least on this issue, and force the Assembly wobblers, terrified of their own voters, to knuckle under.

Stay tuned.

Maybe The 2019 Sentencing Commission Bill Will Pass...

Brian Leubitz says what's needed to be said about the prison "reform" bill that the Assembly has gutted and will vote on Monday. You can see that bill here. Actually this is now a parole reform bill, and on that measure it's not bad. It ends blanket supervision and focuses resources on the worst offenders. It might even alter the circumstances that has made California alone among all states where the parole system has become nothing more than a revolving door back to jail.

But the bill removes the independent sentencing commission that would actually review and make sensible recommendations on our out-of-control sentencing process, which in the end is the only way to truly get a handle on the prison crisis. Here's Brian:

Without the sentencing commission this bill isn't worth the pixels on your screen. It won't fix the prisons. It won't create any substantive change. It will merely kick the can down the road. In order for this bill to be worthwhile, it MUST have a sentencing commission with teeth. A sentencing commission that allows policy makers who understand public safety to make the decisions, not political hacks trying to make their way to the next job. Again, if it can play in Kansas, it can happen here. The only thing missing here are a few legislators with courage.

In other words, this bill misses the opportunity presented by the budget challenges. Frankly, we only have so many cracks at this apple, and this is the perfect storm for a sentencing commission: A Republican Governor providing some cover, a budget mess requiring cost savings, and a federal court order hanging over our heads. The time is now. Like Arnold and his crew are using the mess to shock doctrine the state, we should use this mess to fix the state.

The Democrats in the Assembly who are seeking higher office do not have the courage of their convictions. Several of them have voted for a sentencing commission in the past, enough for such a bill to pass the Assembly in 2007, but they don't want to this time because they fear attack mailers. It's this kind of poor excuse for leadership that has forced federal judges to step in where the legislature would not and demand justice for those in the system whose Constitutional rights are being violated. And since the judges cannot create a sentencing commission or attack the root cause of the problem, and will probably just mass release the amount of prisoners they deem necessary (this bill still falls woefully short of their order), we'll be back here before long.

Maybe then the Assembly can recognize that there's a right and wrong way to go about this. But of course, nobody currently in the Assembly will have to make that decision, thanks to term limits.

The words "broken government" come to mind.

Bad Messenger

Can't really argue with the message, however:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this afternoon said Assembly lawmakers “don’t have the guts” to make the cuts to the state prison system, criticizing them as politically motivated for stalling on a plan that would reduce the number of inmates in state lockups to save money.

“They don’t have the guts to go in there and to make the prison reform that they have been talking about for two decades, which we need to reduce the amount of inmates in there,” Schwarzenegger said in a webcast interview with the co-founders of Twitter at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.

“The Assembly legislators, for them it was easier to go and make the $10-billion cut in education, but it is impossible for them to make the $1-billion cut” for prisons, he said.

I've been plenty vocal about the cowardice of lawmakers who actually voted for a sentencing commission two years ago, but who cannot do it now because of how it might affect them in their next election. But Arnold Schwarzenegger making this statement is RICH.

Has he ever signed a bill that the Chamber of Commerce told him not to?

Has he ever dealt with the prison crisis, which has gone on throughout his entire tenure, up until this point?

Has he bothered to lift a finger while the state truly tumbled into the nether regions, with its safety net destroyed, its economy in tatters and its outlook bleak, at best?

Has he ever even had a sleepless night while all of this happened, instead of laying back with a stogie?

Maybe those who want to see a smart prison policy should get someone who isn't as cowardly as the Assembly to make the message that the Assembly is cowardly.

America's Worst Legislature

Trying to appease the cowards running for higher office in the Assembly rank and file, Karen Bass has dropped the sentencing commission out of the prison reform package.

The sentencing commission was among the most controversial provisions of the Senate prison plan. But on Monday, Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said “a real sentencing commission, with teeth, is my top priority” for corrections legislation.

Steinberg spokeswoman Alicia Dlugosh said Monday that the Senate leader would like to see any legislation passed by the Assembly “realize the same dollar figure in savings as the Senate bill.”

The bill passed last week by the Senate, AB 14 XXX would save the state an estimated $600 million, according to an analysis of the bill. But the Assembly seemed poised to make key changes that would reduce those savings by about $220 million.

Among the other changes expected to be made by the Assembly would be the elimination of a provision that would change some crimes which can be either felonies or misdemeanors --known as “wobblers” – exclusively to misdemeanors. The Assembly bill expected to come up for a vote this week would leave the state’s wobbler law unchanged.

Assembly Democrats also balked at a provision in the Senate bill that would allow some sick and elderly inmates to finish their sentences under house arrest.

Bass said she hoped to pass the sentencing commission as stand-alone legislation later in the year. First of all, the year ends on September 11, and second, adding the commission to a must-pass reform package was the whole point. If lawmakers objected to it as part of a package, they're not going to turn around and support it in isolation.

Punting on this issue will ensure that federal judges will be mandating reductions of the prison population 10 years down the road. The only reform worth doing in the package now clarifies parole policy, devoting resources to those who need to be monitored instead of the blanket supervision that has turned our parole system into a revolving door. But that will not be enough to turn around the prison crisis for the long-term, without finally doing something about our ever expanding sentencing law.

This also shows the complete dysfunction of the leadership. Darrell Steinberg may not go along with the limited version, and I don't blame him. His chamber has now stuck their neck out three times on tough votes - Tranquillon Ridge drilling, HUTA raids and now this - that the Assembly has quashed. I wasn't unhappy about the first two, but if I was in the Senate, I'd be pissed about all these controversial votes I was needlessly taking. You'd think Karen Bass would have a sense of her caucus and know that she couldn't pass whatever she and Steinberg and the Governor hammered out in private. Because she's on her way out the door in 2010 she has no leverage over the caucus, because everyone's termed out and running for something else they have no fealty to the Assembly, and because they all live perpetually in fear they won't take a vote they know would help future generations deal with a crisis.

As I've said, a broken process will almost always produce a broken result. But individual lawmakers need to be called out. Particularly the three Assemblymembers running for Attorney General who think they're showing off their toughness. When all of them lose, they'll probably attribute it to other factors. They should be reminded of this day.

No Vote Yet On Prison Reform

Jim Sanders reports that the Assembly will not hold a vote on a prison reform package today, as legislative leaders and law enforcement groups huddle to reach a compromise. Yes, law enforcement groups, which should read lobbyists. They hold a veto over processes like this.

I'm amazed by how any lawmaker could possibly view a vote like this on prison reform as a choice. Federal judges have affirmatively ruled that California must cut its prison population by 44,000 inmates, and submit a plan to do so by next month. The judges charged with oversight on the prison system have spoken unanimously on this subject and given the state years to work out the issue. If lawmakers vote this down, the population will get reduced ANYWAY, and in all likelihood in a far more randomized and less considered fashion. You would think that the legislature would want a bit more say in the matter, especially since any bad outcome arising from early release will be blamed on them anyway, since that's just the default reaction of most people in this state.

Furthermore, the legislature has already earmarked $1.2 billion in cuts to the prison budget. That was affirmed by a majority in both chambers - I believe, a 2/3 majority - and signed into law by the Governor. This vote is not optional. It's required as a function of last month's budget vote. Bills with compromises that cut less money or lead to the reduction of less of the population are really useless, because eventually, that money will need to be cut and those prisoners released. Assembly Democrats afraid of special interests are living in a fantasy world.

And we really are talking about fear.

In the Assembly, nearly 40% of Democrats (19) are running for another office. Most are fearful of being branded by campaign opponents as "soft on crime" if they vote for, say, early release from prison of even decrepit old blind men.

That's why a plan by Democratic leaders and the governor to reduce the prison population by 27,300 inmates this year and save $525 million passed the Senate 21 to 19 last week, but stalled in the skittish Assembly. No Republican supported the bill, but none was needed because it required only a majority vote to pass.

An amended, watered-down measure may be debated on the Assembly floor today. It will retain the feature Schwarzenegger deems most important: an overhaul of the parole system by focusing on the riskiest parolees and paying little attention to the rest, resulting in fewer ex-cons being returned to prison for minor violations.

All this can be worked out and space freed up in the barracks and gyms. Better to do it now than after the predictable prison blowup.

As for what is subject to change in that amended plan, here's a good rundown. Most of it is nibbling around the edges - adding back a couple crimes as felonies, lowering the dollar threshold for grand theft, changing the months' worth of sentencing credits for rehabilitation and vocational training from 6 to 4 - but these are the big ones:

Eliminate a proposal that would allow the release of up to 6,300 "lower-risk" inmates -- under house arrest with electronic monitoring -- who are medically infirm, aged, or serving the final 12 months of their sentence.

Alter the structure of a proposed sentencing commission that would have broad powers to rewrite sentencing guidelines.

The Assembly version would raise the commission's voting members from 13 to 14. It also would grant law enforcement more clout both by adding a representative from rank-and-file and by requiring that any actions of the commission by approved by two law enforcement members. A requirement that an ex-felon receive a nonvoting seat would be eliminated.

It's truly amazing the law enforcement, under this plan, would literally hold a veto over statutory considerations like sentencing. I believe that plenty of members of the law enforcement community actually understand that they can be smarter on crime, keep people safe and save the state money. But that's just a hijack over the process.

The bottom line is this - we spend more than any state except Michigan on prisons in terms of a percentage of the overall budget, and federal judges have ordered a reduction in inmates. Regardless of special interests or anything else, something's gotta give.

Living 21 Years In The Past

The SacBee reports that Tough On Crime types are trotting out the same symbols that Lee Atwater used in 1988 to sink a Democratic Presidential candidate.

Willie Horton's shadow haunts the Capitol as lawmakers wrestle with how to cut $1.2 billion from state prisons without endangering public safety.

More than two decades after Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush used televised ads of murderer Horton to paint presidential opponent Michael Dukakis as soft on crime, state GOP lawmakers are slapping Democrats with a similar charge over proposed prison cuts.

The politically explosive issue, coupled with opposition from some law enforcement groups, is making many Democrats jittery – especially those with aspirations for higher office.

I'm hearing that a lot of this nonsense is being pushed by astroturf front groups for the prison guard's union. And considering that Horton was the kind of violent offender who would be exempted from any changes in the law under the plan on offer, it's simply baseless. But this may be more about getting prison guard money and law enforcement support in future elections. But it has the effect of legitimizing the kind of nonsense that has destroyed our prison system, given us the highest recidivism rate in the nation, put the prison health care system in the hands of a federal receiver due to Constitutional violations, and drawn a demand from federal judges to reduce the population by 44,000.

And it's working, of course.

Bass proposes to eliminate a provision in the Senate-passed plan that has attracted the most intense opposition.

Known as "alternative custody," the controversial proposal would allow the release of up to 6,300 low-level, nonviolent inmates who are elderly, medically infirm, or have less than a year remaining on their sentences.

Inmates released under the plan would be subject to electronic monitoring under "house arrest," which could include placement in a residence, local program, hospital or treatment center.

Because blind people with one leg are dangers to society, and we should spend more money warehousing them than we do on the average higher education student. Makes perfect sense. Not to mention the fact that the judges will probably release these same offenders anyway, as part of the federal mandate.

The real fear is that the Assembly will water down the sentencing commission so that lawmakers will have to affirmatively pass their recommendations into law instead of having to pass legislation to prevent those recommendations from being enacted. Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, running for Attorney General, basically says in the piece that he wants such a change. It's a subtle but important difference; essentially the recommendations will be easier to kill under the weakened standard. And so we continue the endless Tough On Crime march that has put us into a ditch.

Meanwhile, as John Myers notes, intransigence on sensible prison reform will simply increase the eventual budget deficit:

Then there's the never-ending state budget blues. The original prison plan, when added to February's budget cuts and gubernatorial plans to reduce prison spending, was a $1.2 billion part of the deficit solution written into law; the original bill, alone, was estimated to save as much as $600 million. But that was with those alternatives to prison cell custody and fewer crimes resulting in felony one-way tickets to the joint. The 'Plan B' version, say staffers, may come up as much as $200 million short (and that's assuming all of the original savings estimated were valid).

In some years, a $200 million gap in the California state budget may not be the end of the world. But this is no ordinary year; cuts a fraction of that size are forcing all kinds of shutdowns of state services. And if this plan becomes the new way to go on prisons, it's going to leave a lot of budget watchers -- and Californians -- wondering what happens next.

Democrats are wrong if they think they can finesse the right into taking the charge that they are "coddling murderers" off the table. Just look at eMeg, claiming that a sentencing commission would reverse three strikes, about as factual a charge as Sarah Palin's "death panels." They'll always be smeared, so they might as well do the right thing for once.

Don't Expect A Broken Government To Yield An Unbroken Result

So the modest prison reform deal between legislative leaders and the Governor stalled out in the Assembly last night, and the chamber adjourned for the weekend. Not enough Democrats could be convinced to support the deal, particularly the ones with designs on statewide office or in perceived swing districts.

Let's explain right away what this says about the broken legislative process in Sacramento. It's infuriating that the bill was rushed to the floor without the votes on the Assembly side and without any kind of education campaign to explain the stakes to the public. Federal judges will release 44,000 prisoners. We can either do it smartly or stupidly. There is no other choice.

We knew that $1.2 billion in prison budget cuts had to be allocated for a month. This plan was, in fact, pretty much in place for a month. Did anyone in leadership say a word about it? Did they whip their caucus? Did they explain that without this, a federal judge will use a potentially haphazard process to release prisoners without any reforms, and even if the legislature tries to shift the blame, THEY WILL BE BLAMED ANYWAY because citizens habitually view the legislature as the source of most of the state's troubles?

Instead, the debate gets ruled by Yacht Party misinformation:

Sen. John Benoit, R-Palm Desert, spoke in favor of shutting down some juvenile jails instead of freeing inmates since the population of younger offenders has dropped. "It's a shame we're doing this in such a hurry," he said.

And Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Niguel, spoke out for cutting rehabilitation money rather than letting prisoners out. "The immediate safety of the public must take precedence," she said.

Not only does it do that (overcrowding has led to the lack of space for rehabilitation and treatment programs and the nation's highest recidivism rate, which leads to additional needless crime), but the package put together by the legislature WOULD do that. Schwarzenegger's line-item reductions as part of this deal would cut $180 million in rehab and treatment programs, which is completely insane. That said, the sentencing commission that would come to fruition in this bill is quite important, and those Democrats in the Assembly holding it up are rank cowards who don't have no belief in the value of their own ideas. Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod does:

Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod said, "Do you all live in a parallel world?" She said federal authorities that have found California prisons too overcrowded are going to use their power to release prisoners and that it would be preferable for the state to have control over that process.

"I trump each and everyone of you with children and grandchildren. And you know what? I'm not scared," she said, referring to several GOP senators' references to how they feared for their children's safety.

Still, in the end this is a process problem. The backroom dealmaking made by legislative leaders who have no sway over their caucuses leads to embarrassing results like this. The power of special interests leads to calculations that changes must be made in the dead of night, and the power of money in politics means that fear can rule over hope. Individual cowardly lawmakers in thrall to Tough On Crime thinking led us down this road, but a broken government certainly keeps us there. And it's not, as this shows, just about 2/3.

...I'm hearing that "Crime Victims United," a front group for the prison guard's union which has never received one donation from anyone else, claimed sex offenders would get early release despite being exempted specifically in the bill. They out and out lied, and would have done so in ads in lawmakers' districts. Crime Victims United should be investigated by the FPPC and disbanded. They're an astroturf group using fear and falsehoods to shield a protected class from having to give back their largesse from the state treasury. Ultimately, this is about cowardice on the part of lawmakers, but the influence of money plays a big role.

State Senate Passes Modest Prison Reform

By the bare minimum, with 21 votes for, 19 against. We move to the Assembly now, and the Governor supports it, so if 41 votes can be found, we will have a real sentencing commission that can begin to roll back the Tough On Crime nonsense that has failed California's prison system and made us less safe.

It's going to be close in the Assembly. Word is that Democrats are balking at some of the provisions, because they don't think their constituents are adults who would understand how horribly broken the status quo has become. And serial liar and Yacht Party regular George Runner has vowed to put the legislation on the ballot if it passes, to overturn it (maybe he'll get the same convicted felon to fund it who did so for Prop. 9). This is just the beginning of the fight no matter what happens in the Assembly. But we have to get this through there. If we cannot bring an even modest reform across the line, there's really no hope.

I will reiterate what I said yesterday:

If you're in the districts of any of these lawmakers, contact them NOW and tell them to vote Yes on [ABX3 14 http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=abx3_14&sess=CUR&house=B&site=sen].

Alyson Huber (AD-10) (Calitics raised a fair bit of money for her)
Joan Buchanan (AD-15) (Does she want to win a liberal primary for Congress?)
Marty Block (AD-78)
Manuel Perez (AD-80) (Calitics raised a fair bit of money for him)
Ted Lieu (AD-53)
Pedro Nava (AD-35)
Alberto Torrico (AD-20)
Cathleen Galgiani (AD-17)
Anna Caballero (AD-28)

Prison Vote Tomorrow Includes Sentencing Commission

More details have emerged about the prison reform legislation both houses of the Legislature will take up tomorrow, and according to multiple sources, it will include a sentencing commission, a major victory for reformers if it passes.

Legislative Democrats will push a commission to create a new system for prison sentences as part of Democrats’ prison overhaul plan, which will be voted on the floor of both houses Thursday.

The commission, which has been pushed for by liberal Democrats for years, has been a major rift between Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in recent years. But changes made this week over who controls the commission seem to have the governor's OK [...]

Under a draft proposal circulating in the Capitol Wednesday, the new commission would be called the California Public Safety Commission. The panel would consist of 13 members, including the corrections secretary, chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the state public defender. The governor would make eight appointments to the board. The chief justice would make the other two appointments, both of whom must be retired judges.

The bill calls for the commission to present a new set of parole and sentencing rules to the Legislature by June 1, 2012.

I don't really like the Governor controlling 8 of the 13 appointments, just for balance-of-power reasons. But if that's the price of support, and if it truly will make recommendations based on the law and the data, I can live with it. And remember, the commission wouldn't produce findings until June 2012. In the interim we will have a new Governor who could make alternate commission recommendations.

Most important, having a commission which is independent, and whose rules would have the force of law unless repealed by the legislature (a much more lasting solution than if they have to positively endorse them with a vote) does really change the game around sentencing in California. It may not work perfectly, but it could really make a difference, and the alternative is the legislature adding one sentencing increase after another as they have done for the last 30 years, and a prison system collapsing under its own weight, as the Governor said today.

Now, I don't agree with all the aspects of prison reform as laid out by the Governor and the Legislature (here's the bill). I think reducing funding for rehabilitation, educational and vocational training programs by $175 million, as called for in the part of the legislation the Governor will enact by line-item appropriation, is insane and completely counter-productive. And I don't see how lowering reimbursement rates for doctors and nurses operating in the prisons, at a time when prison health care is in the hands of a federal receiver, is even legal. But the sentencing commission is crucial enough, and some of the other reforms similarly salutary (like ending blanket parole supervision and concentrating on those with the most serious offenses, or increasing early release credits for those who meet rehabilitation milestones), that I have to accept at least what the Legislature is doing, if not the Governor (most of the bad stuff are in his line items).

The Legislature and Governor are splitting the work here to make the $524 million in cuts more palatable to potential "tough on crime" lawmakers wary of the vote. Greg Lucas thinks that Democrats may not have the votes in the Assembly.

There are 50 Democrats in the lower house. A bill reducing prison spending requires 41 votes. That allows Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, to give “passes” to nine of her members.

Certainly four Democrats Bass would allow not to vote on the bill are those targeted for defeat in 2010 by Republicans – the incumbents of Assembly Districts, 10, 15, 78 and 80.

They are, respectively: Alyson Huber of El Dorado Hills, Joan Buchanan of Alamo, Marty Block of San Diego and Mannie Perez of Coachella.

Certainly the three Assembly members running for Attorney General would want to be spared from having to vote for the bill. The Attorney General is commonly perceived as being California’s “Top Cop.”

They are: Ted Lieu of Torrance, Pedro Nava of Santa Barbara and Alberto Torrico of Fremont.

In June, Fresno Assemblyman Juan Arambula, a moderate Democrat, re-registered as an independent. In July, he voted with his former Democratic colleagues to close an estimated $24 billion hole in the budget. But whether that willingness extends to prison cuts that will release more parolees into his Central Valley district is uncertain.

Among other Democrats, casting a perceived “anti-public safety” vote would not be a popular in the districts of Cathleen Galgiani of Tracy and Anna Caballero of Salinas.

The governor holds little or no sway with Assembly Republicans so the odds are against him convincing any GOP lawmakers to vote for the bill. That leaves Speaker Bass with a math problem.

We MUST get enough of these Assemblymembers to vote for any bill with a sentencing commission. Gloria Romero's sentencing commission bill in 2007, which was better, died in the Assembly, with help from many of these people. If Karen Bass can knuckle down on her caucus to vote for disastrous cuts to the social safety net, she can find enough to pass the widest-reaching reform package in prisons in 30 years. If you're in the districts of any of these lawmakers, contact them NOW and tell them to vote Yes on AB 14 3X.

Alyson Huber (AD-10) (Calitics raised a fair bit of money for her)
Joan Buchanan (AD-15) (Does she want to win a liberal primary for Congress?)
Marty Block (AD-78)
Manuel Perez (AD-80) (Calitics raised a fair bit of money for him)
Ted Lieu (AD-53)
Pedro Nava (AD-35)
Alberto Torrico (AD-20)
Cathleen Galgiani (AD-17)
Anna Caballero (AD-28)

They don't have to give in to the Tough on Crime mentality which has destroyed our prison system. They can look toward a better future, with sensible policy that saves money and makes Californians safer.

Steinberg, Democrats Say They Have The Votes For Modest Prison Reform

The short-term fights are starting to be VERY short-term. Following up on an earlier item, Democrats in the legislature plan to hold a vote on prison reform as early as Thursday, that would clarify $1.2 billion dollars in cuts. And they don't need any Republican votes to do it.

Over objections from Republican lawmakers, the Legislature plans to take up a majority-vote prison package Thursday that is designed to reduce the state's inmate population by 27,300 and is backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The overall package would save $1.2 billion in part by reducing certain property crimes to misdemeanors, placing low-level parolees on global positioning system monitoring and sending older, infirm prisoners to house arrest or medical facilities to serve the final 12 months of their sentences.

The initial plan included an independent sentencing commission that could report back on changes to the runaway sentencing laws at the heart of the prison crisis. I don't see that mentioned in this article, or anywhere else. Hopefully that remains part of the solution. And like the rest, lawmakers can enact it on a majority-vote basis (which means that the solutions wouldn't take effect for 90 days). Darrell Steinberg reiterated his support today.

"I'm confident we'll have the votes," said Steinberg, who will caucus with Democrats tomorrow

Steinberg said the Senate would vote on the governor's plan, but with slight modifications to clarify which elderly and infirm inmates could be eligible for alternative custody and release.

"The intent has never been to carte blanche release any inmates, elderly, infirm inmates," he said. "It never has been, but there has been some concern expressed, so we want to make sure that there are very tight criteria that would even allow for the possibility of allowing elderly and infirm inmates to be released."

I prefer the People's Budget Fix, which would stop putting nonviolent drug offenders in overcrowded prisons, focus on reducing recidivism through rehabilitation and treatment, institute risk-based parole supervision rather than blanket supervision that inevitably raises the rates of recidivism (often on technical violations of parole), and address the most ineffective areas of the criminal justice system - the burdensome, brutal three strikes law, and the death penalty. The People's Budget Fix coalition held a rally today. You can hear Leland Yee speaking about it here and here.

And I hope they keep fighting. I hope we have a sane criminal justice policy caucus in the legislature as a counterweight to the tough on crime troglodytes. But while the Democratic/Schwarzenegger package isn't perfect, but it's the first step in the right direction in 30 years. Particularly if the sentencing commission is included in the package, it will be historic and very important. We will finally end the long march of building more prisons and warehousing inmates without giving them the tools to actually rehabilitate themselves and become productive members of society, and toward a future where we spend less, create more productive citizens and actually make our state safer.

The Stakes Of The Upcoming Prison Policy Fight

At the Netroots Nation panel (and a quick thanks to everyone who attended, and the panelists, and Dan Walters for noticing), I identified two short-term fights that are worth engaging. One consists of playing defense - stopping the Parsky Commission from instituting a Latvia-ization of California through eliminating business taxes and flattening the income tax. The other short-term fight concerns the $1.2 billion dollars in cuts to the prison budget, identified in the July budget agreement but not clarified on the specifics until the Legislature returns to work this week. We are starting to see some organizing around that, with human rights and civil liberties leaders massing on the Capitol Steps today to promote sound prison reform instead of just lopping off all rehabilitation and treatment programs for the overcrowded corrections system and calling it a day. Leland Yee, Nancy Skinner, Jim Beall and Tom Ammiano, who just replaced indie Juan Arambula as chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, will speak. So we have a sympathetic ear on one of the key committees.

About a week back, Laura Sullivan produced an NPR report describing the devolution of the corrections system in California, using Johnny Cash's historic concert at Folsom Prison as a launching pad:

The morning that Cash played may have been the high-water mark for Folsom — and for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The men in the cafeteria lived alone in their own prison cells. Almost every one of them was in school or learning a professional trade. The cost of housing them barely registered on the state budget. And when these men walked out of Folsom free, the majority of them never returned to prison.

It was a record no other state could match.

Things have changed. California's prisons are all in a state of crisis. And nowhere is this more visible than at Folsom today.

Folsom was built to hold 1,800 inmates. It now houses 4,427.

It's once-vaunted education and work programs have been cut to just a few classes, with waiting lists more than 1,000 inmates long.

Officers are on furlough. Its medical facility is under federal receivership. And like every other prison in the state, 75 percent of the inmates who are released from Folsom today will be back behind bars within three years.

In addition to having a solid education, transportation and medical system in the early post-war period, California's prisons were once the envy of the nation, too. Then the Tough On Crime crowd got a hold of the levers of power, produced 1,000 laws expanding sentences over 30 years, pushed the public to do the same through ballot initiatives, increased parole sanctions, and the system just got swamped. In the early 1980s we had 20,000 prisoners. Now it's 170,000. The overcrowding decimates rehabilitation, sends nonviolent offenders into what amounts to a college for violent crime, violates prisoner rights by denying proper medical care, and increases costs at every point along the way. Sullivan argues that much of this goes back to the prison guard's union.

In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law.

And the result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000 officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year.

Sullivan uncovered a front group PAC called Crime Victims United of California that has received every one of their donations from the CCPOA. By seeding "victim's rights" groups and enabling more stringent sentencing laws, the CCPOA mainly benefits from the overtime needed for their officers to properly house 170,000 prisoners in cells designed for 100,000. 70% of the prison budget pays salaries. 5% goes to education and vocational programs. And that's the part of the budget being cut.

It only costs her about $100,000 to run these programs — not even a blip in a $10 billion-a-year prison budget. But, says Bracy, the programs are always the first to go. Sometimes she almost feels like giving up.

"It's just not cost-effective to throw men and women in prison and then do nothing with them," she said. "And shame on us for thinking that's safety. It's not public safety. You lock them up and do nothing with them. They go out not even equal to what they came in but worse."

The numbers bear that out, with 90,000 inmates returning to California's prisons every year.

But compare that to the Braille program here at Folsom. Inmates are learning to translate books for the blind. In 20 years, not a single inmate who has been part of the program has ever returned to prison. This year, the program has been cut back to 19 inmates.

Meanwhile, the Schwarzenegger Administration is about to use federal money to increase funding for anti-drug units, which will actually send more nonviolent drug offenders to prison at a time when federal judges have mandated the reduction of the population by 44,000.

This is insanity. But members of the political class, for the most part, still want to be seen as daddy protectors, and will gladly institute the exact same failed policies that have thrown the system into crisis.

We have a moment here, with $1.2 billion in mandated cuts, to create legitimate policies that can both cut costs and reduce the prison population while actually making the state safer. The recent Chino prison riot has led editorialists to come out for sensible prison policies, understanding the connection between stuffing hundreds of thousands of people into modified public storage units and the potential for unrest.

Jean Ross argued on our panel that lawmakers will probably pass the buck and let the judicial branch take the heat for any individual consequences to early release. That would be a mistake, particularly if in the process, they jettison the founding of an independent sentencing commission that would finally address the runaway sentencing laws at the heart of the crisis. The clock is ticking on whether we will have any leadership on this issue, as a report is demanded by the federal judges in mid-September. This is an organizing opportunity, a chance to show an ossified political class that we care about more than just being Tough On Crime.

The Reaction: Tough On Crime Robots Cannot Come To Terms With Reality

The federal ruling to reduce the prison population by over 40,000 is the result of a years-long, if not decades-long process, where the failed leaders run amok in Sacramento have let the corrections system grow completely out of control, preferring to warehouse prisoners into modified Public Storage units instead of embarking on same, smart policies that would save us money and make us safer. In response to this damaging comment on the state's failure, the political leadership has... signed up for more failure:

Attorney General Jerry Brown said in an interview that the order is probably not appealable, but eventually the state will have to consider going directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, marking the first time the high court would face such a case.

"I think the Supreme Court would see it differently," Brown said.

State officials said the proper solution is for the governor and legislators to work out a reduction plan as funding becomes available. The state should not be forced to function under the hammer of a federal court order, they said.

"We just don't agree that the federal courts should be ordering us to take these steps," said Matthew Cate, secretary of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

How dare the federal courts order anyone around to respect Constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment! Who the hell do they think they are, a co-equal branch of government?

What's so interesting about this is how abnormal it is. Federal courts grant a significant amount of leeway to the states to manage affairs. But when a state consistently and deliberately violates Constitutional rights without letup, they must act. And that's been true for a long time.

California's archipelago of 33 prisons houses more than 170,000 inmates, nearly twice the number it was designed to safely hold. Almost all of its facilities are bursting at the seams: More than 16,000 prisoners sleep on what are known as "ugly beds" — extra bunks stuffed into cells, gyms, dayrooms, and hallways. [Governor Arnold] Schwarzenegger has referred to the system as a "powder keg."

....Even as Schwarzenegger has promised reform, the corrections budget has exploded during his term, from $4.7 billion in fiscal 2004 to nearly $10 billion in fiscal 2007, or about $49,000 for each adult inmate.

....For more than three decades, California has been trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle where putting more people in prison for longer periods of time has become the answer to every new crime to capture the public's attention — from drug dealing and gangbanging to tragic child abductions. Spurred on by a powerful prison guards' union and politicians afraid of looking soft on crime, corrections has become a bottomless pit, where countless lives and dollars disappear year after year. And now that it has metastasized to the point where even a tough-guy governor and the guards agree that the prisons must be downsized or else (see "When Prison Guards Go Soft"), every attempt at change seems stymied by inertia. The sheer size of the system has become the biggest obstacle to finding alternatives to warehousing criminals without preparing them for anything more than another cycle of incarceration. "The public believes the prison population reflects the crime rate," says James Austin, a corrections consultant who has served on several prison-reform panels in California. "That's just not true. It's because of California's policies and the way it runs the system."

This is a policy failure driven by a political failure, a cowardly series of actions that arises from a broken system of government. Dan Walters happens to be spot-on today - politicians have played on people's fears for 30 years and, faced with the tragedy they created, delayed and procrastinated until it became so torturous that the courts had to step in. From the three-strikes law to the 1,000 sentencing laws passed by the Legislature, all increasing sentences, nobody comes out looking good in this failure of leadership. Even the Attorney General of the United States recognizes that we cannot jail our way out of crime problems.

“We will not focus exclusively on incarceration as the most effective means of protecting public safety,” Holder told the American Bar Association delegates meeting here for their annual convention. “Since 2003, spending on incarceration has continued to rise, but crime rates have flattened.”

“Today, one out of every 100 adults in America is incarcerated — the highest incarceration rate in the world,” he said. But the country has reached a point of diminishing returns at which putting even greater percentages of America’s citizens behind bars won’t cut the crime rate.

Mark Kleiman has additional good thoughts.

Federal Judges Order California To Reduce Prison Population By 40,000

A ruling by the three-judge panel who have effectively taken control of the California prison system has ordered the state to reduce the prison population by as much as 40,000 inmates within the next two years, finding the system in violation of Constitutional mandates. The Tough On Crime balloon has just popped.

The judges said that reducing prison crowding in California was the only way to change what they called an unconstitutional prison health care system that causes one unnecessary death a week. In a scathing 184-page order, the judges criticized state officials, saying they had failed to comply with previous orders to fix the health care system in the prisons and reduce crowding, and recommended remedies, including reform of the parole system.

The special three-judge panel also described a chaotic prison system where prisoners were stacked in triple bunk beds in gymnasiums, hallways and day rooms; where single guards were often forced to monitor scores of inmates at a time; and where ill inmates died for lack of treatment.

“In these overcrowded conditions, inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent, infectious diseases spread more easily, and lockdowns are sometimes the only means by which to maintain control,” the panel wrote. “In short, California’s prisons are bursting at the seams and are impossible to manage.”

This started as a series of lawsuits claiming that the overcrowded prisons violated inmates' Constitutional right to medical care through the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment while under confinement. The judges concluded that massive reductions were the only way to get the balance right and restore Constitutional order to the process.

It's nothing less than an epic failure at all levels of leadership over the last thirty years which has brought us to the point where judges must mandate reductions in the prisons. A state that is unable to manage its finances can also clearly not manage its plainly illegal corrections system.

This now hangs over the head of lawmakers as they come back from recess in August and determine how to achieve $1.2 billion dollars in savings to the prison system. The Governor and Democrats in the legislature have proscribed various reform programs that would reduce the prison population, change mandatory prison sentences for technical parole violation, and create an independent sentencing commission to look at reforming our draconian sentencing policies. Many of these reforms are desperately needed, would save money for the state and also comprise a smarter, more sensible way to deal with prisons that actually makes Californians safer. Today's ruling makes this not only a good set of ideas, but a mandatory set, given that the state is now under court order to reduce the population.

The Governor's Prisons Secretary Matthew Cate is not ruling out appealing the ruling to the US Supreme Court. He also claims that the state has a plan to reduce overcrowding that would lower the number of prisoners by 35,000 in two years. That's less than required by the ruling. But this is no longer an option; unless they appeal, and it's no guarantee they can, the state must submit a plan to meet the judges' dictates within 45 days. End of story.