The Supreme Court order has left 18 other states looking over their shoulders.
California Correctional Peace Officers Association
Certainly those within the system see what is happening. CCPOA represents over 30,000 public safety personnel who work every day to manage the increased tensions and dangers that are exacerbated by prison overcrowding and insufficient staff.
The CCPOA presented a report to the Legislature in 2007. The report came after the group examined the results of expedited legislation to meet the bare minimums required by a 2006 order to release inmates and reduce overcrowding in the California (Calif.) prison system.
According to CCPOA, the lack of real prison reform has caused uncontrollable overcrowding, skyrocketing health care costs, and a 70 percent recidivism rate.
Calif. is not the only state with prison overcrowding problems. “As of April 2000, the federal prison system had 34 percent more inmates than the institutions should hold based on standards adopted by the Bureau of Prisons (BoP). Most state prison systems are also overcrowded. ... The California systems are the most overcrowded, holding 203 percent at the highest capacity measure,” according to JoAnne Bryant in the report “Prisons: Policy Options for Congress, from the Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress.”
It was reported that over 144,000 inmates were in Calif. prisons designed to hold about 80,000.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 1,524,513 people were in prison in the United States in 2009, the most recent figures the agency had published.
Federal courts generally do not get involved in the operation of state police and prisons. The states have sole responsibility for establishing and operating their own penal systems.
The American Civil Liberties Union took two inmates’ medical cases and sued the state in 2005. These were two class action lawsuits regarding its failure to provide adequate medical support/treatment for its prisoners. A three-judge panel was called to review the case encompassing both lawsuits. The judges ruled in 2007 that Calif. must release inmates.
The state of Calif. decided to test the efficacy of the use of the three-judge panel and appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. This backfired in May, and instead of protecting the state’s right to run its own police and prisons, the court noted that because of the egregious out of control situation, immediate action was warranted that requires the release of 30,000 inmates.
The case was split, with only five of the nine justices supporting the case that the state failed to provide the care required under the Eighth Amendment.
Fixing the System
Prison improvements, both in design and physical condition are required. Obviously, more beds and access to medical care are also required.
CCPOA recommends ways to remedy the current system, which include sentencing reform and implementing the realignment plan.
Sentencing Reform
Sentencing reform and alternative community-based incarceration or monitoring is a good way to reduce prison crowding, according to CCPOA. Non-felony prisoners should be monitored and rehabilitated at the community level. This would spread the cost for medical care and offender monitoring personnel into the communities at a lower cost than building prisons around the state. This would also allow tens of thousands of non-felon inmates to be moved into communities where many of the services needed to rehabilitate them are available. Housing options could vary from living with their families to the local jail. Medical care would be readily available.
Realignment Plan
According to CCPOA, “The California chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups want the state to reduce drug possession and low-level, nonviolent property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, and they want more community-based alternatives to incarceration.” However, Calif. legislators can’t seem to get any legislation moving. The group noted that, “Texas, Mississippi, and Kentucky embrace sentencing reform and alternatives to incarceration.”
The Inmate Transfer Bill AB109 was signed into law by Brown and states that no inmates currently in state prison will be released early. All felons sent to state prisons will continue to serve their entire sentences. All felons convicted of a serious or violent offense—including sex offenders and child molesters—will go to state prison. Calif. felons not eligible for state prison can serve their sentences at the local level.
Counties are already bracing to receive inmates expected to arrive Oct. 1, when funding should be made available. The budget Brown signed two weeks ago will put $5 billion from sales taxes and vehicle taxes into local coffers to support an influx of inmates from state prisons.
