• $182.1 million by deportation of undocumented state prisoners to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.
• $175 million by decreasing in the number of programs for parolees. Programs that have been demonstrated to effectively reduce recidivism will be retained. The CDCR will also attempt to achieve this savings through more efficient delivery of programs.
• $147.6 million in “operational savings” by a one-time reduction in facility repairs, headquarter savings, additional efficiencies within the operations of the juvenile programs, and other operational savings.
• $50 million from establishing limits on contract reimbursement rates for medical services.
That’s a total of over $500 million in speculative savings, but it’s just the beginning. An additional $630.8 million will be achieved through various reforms intended to reduce prison and parole populations.
It's going to be interesting, and the political posturing has already begun:
http://blogs.kqed.org/capitalnotes/2009 ... bers-game/
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( 2.9 / 311 )The CDCR is at the center of the problem of government spending, which also means change in it is the solution.
Morning Edition, July 15, 2009 · California is a mess financially, and one of its huge burdens is its prisons.
The state spends $10 billion a year on its prison system, which once was a model for states to follow but now is a model of what to avoid, NPR's Laura Sullivan tells Renee Montagne.
The prison population has grown from 25,000 to 175,000 since the early 1990s, not because of an increase in crime, Sullivan says, but because of the "tough-on-crime, three-strikes-and-you're-out" laws. But the growing population isn't the only prison-related challenge facing the state.
Unions are another factor. The prisons employ 33,000 people, including the nation's highest-paid correctional officers. The unions are a powerful political force, backing ballot measures for longer sentencing and punishment, for example.
Parole and probation represent another complicating factor. California has the country's toughest parole sanctions on the books. Each year the system releases 120,000 parolees, and each year 75,000 return to prison for violating their parole on technical terms, such as missing an appointment with a parole officer.
Texas used to have similar laws but found them too costly. So it slowly stopped returning parolees to prison for technical violations, and now Texas doesn't have the overcrowding and fiscal problems facing California, Sullivan says.
The three-strikes rule has returned as a ballot measure, but voters have not repealed it, she adds.
And yet another challenge is the rising cost of health care.
It all adds up to a vicious cycle that California's prisons can't seem to pull out of: Tough laws mean more prison time, more prison time means overcrowding, and overcrowding means less money for health care and other programs to help rehabilitate people and keep them from coming back to prison.
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( 3 / 332 )The California budget stand-off has gone from the ridiculous to the absurd. In a recent interview the Governor asserted that $1 billion could be saved by privatizing the state’s prisons. Specifically he said that $1 billion could be saved by “all the prisons being built by the private sector and also the new services by the private sector and that can save a billion dollars.” In a speech yesterday it became “billions” that could be saved.
California should be very careful when considering privatizing prisons. Proponents of privatizing prisons argue from the position that private enterprise does everything more cost-effectively than government, but recent analyses challenge this assumption. A report by the National Institute of Justice looked at wildly divergent assessments of the cost and performance analyses conducted of the same four prisons. When comparing the cost and performance of public and private prisons cost comparisons are complex and there is no standard way of accounting for “overhead costs” or measures of prison performance (i.e. drug use, escapes and other custody incidents). In short, the goal of justifying privatization may easily influence the analysis.
Privatizing prison services is extremely problematic. In the case of provision of prisoner healthcare – of particular concern in California where a federal judge oversees these services – privatization has been shown to cost more and result in more deaths: in a recent economic analysis out of UC San Diego a study found that those states that contracted out for prison medical care employed 13 percent more medical staff, cost more, and had a 1.8% higher mortality rate. Costs more, kills more.
The economic upside of prison privatization is far from clear, but there are other reasons we should be deeply concerned about an effort to privatize this public function. Prisons are intended to perform a public safety function: to remove those from society who are a danger to others, and to punish and/or rehabilitate (depending on your theory of incarceration) the rest. A private corporation’s only interest is to maximize profits, i.e. increase revenue and reduce expenses. A private corporation simply has no incentive to conduct the public functions of a prison in anything but the most minimally acceptable way, to meet contractual requirements. While the economic incentive is the root of the argument that privatization will increase efficiency, there is also the real, documented danger that prisoners will suffer. And, because the state cannot delegate its constitutional duties to treat prisoners properly, when injury occurs, the state will still be left liable.
There are other ways to meaningfully reduce the costs of prisons in California, without turning them over to the private sector, which will then, of self-interest, lobby for the system’s propagation. We can both reduce the cost of prisons and improve safety at the same time. As a report from the Pew Charitable Trust’s Center on the States highlights, Kansas and Texas – public systems – have found a solutions in combining incentives for reduced recidivism, community supervision of non-violent offenders and sanctions other than prison for minor parole violations. The goal of these measures is to encourage and support parolees in becoming become productive, taxpaying citizens instead of sending them back to prison at taxpayer expense.
Public safety and criminal justice activities are basic governmental functions. To delegate these to the private sector will solve none of the long term problems of California’s prison crisis. Let’s look further down the road and rethink our reliance on prisons to address public safety, with an eye towards fiscal control over our prison system. If we do, we’ll see that our current situation present opportunities to reduce costs over the long term.
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( 2.9 / 359 )As California prisons let in visitors and other "non-essentials," a time to reflect on disease and prisons
The closing of California prisons for the past two weeks to visitors and non-essential personnel based on one possible case of N1H1 virus in a Southern California highlights the link between infectious disease and incarceration and is yet another negative implication of California’s over-reliance on incarceration to address crime. In this case the conditions and numbers of people incarcerated may threaten the public health of California as an efficient system to transmit H1N1.California incarcerates over 170,000 people. Our prisons are filled to twice their capacity and because little forethought is given to the implications of “tough on crime” sentencing laws including mandatory minimums and three strikes. Despite the dire fiscal situation in the state, we continue to send more people to prison and for longer periods of time at exorbitant cost to California’s taxpayers.
While H1N1 is a concern in the community, in California’s overcrowded prisons where basic hygiene and medical care are difficult to maintain, H1N1 and other infectious diseases are an even greater problem because of the increased likelihood that they will spread, and without proper medical response. We know that H1N1 is highly treatable, but in a prison setting concerns that early symptoms may go without attention are real.
Prisons concentrate people who are more likely to have serious health issues: the rate of HIV, Hepatitis C and MRSA to name a few is much higher among prisoners than in the community. In prison, people at high risk for disease are placed in environments where disease is likely to spread. Outbreaks of Norovirus, tuberculosis and MRSA have all occurred in correctional facilities in California in recent years. It’s therefore unsurprising that an early case of H1N1 has occurred there, too.
Because prisoners are frequently transferred throughout the system and more than 95% of prisoners return to our community after an average sentence of two years, we should be concerned, too. It’s not unreasonable that a prisoner outside of San Diego might have just come through San Quentin’s reception center, or had contact with someone sent to Vacaville or Sacramento or any one of the 33 prisons in the state. Any of these prisoners could have come in contact with hundreds of correctional service staff and others who work in prisons daily. And, given the period before symptoms present, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that H1N1 might have been spread to others throughout the state’s prison system. The same is true of any infectious disease in this environment.
This situation highlights yet another deleterious effect of incarcerating hundreds of thousands of Californians each year in a system that can neither prevent nor treat disease at the basic level required by our federal constitution. When you think about H1N1, consider the effect California’s criminal justice laws have on the health of the broader community. It’s time for a change.
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( 2.9 / 439 )Everyone’s suddenly waking up to the problems and costs of California’s prisons. Recent news reports articles detail the conflict between the Receiver and the Governor’s administration, the Receiver’s new $8 billion request to improve medical care, on top of the $7.8 billion allocated last year, plus a new $810 million request, all in the context of a state budget crisis.
It’s the current economic situation that forces us to engage in a true re-thinking of our criminal justice system, rather that a concern for human rights. Regardless, it’s time to replace our “tough on crime” stance with a new one which is “smart on crime.” We need to think about how to reform the criminal justice system in California so that it does more and costs less.
There’s no question about what needs to be done. The “Little Hoover Commission” – a non-partisan state oversight agency of people appointed by the Governor and legislative leaders – conducted an exhaustive review of the California prison system and reported over two years ago that “California’s prisons are out of space and running out of time.” Among their top recommendations were to establish a sentencing commission. The American Law Institute which drafts model criminal laws that are frequently used as the basis for states’ law is developing new sentencing provisions and recommends establishing permanent state sentencing commissions.
This is not a novel approach: sentencing commissions exist in more than 20 states. Their goal is to reduce prison population growth, provide rationale to support effective and evidence-based programs and to tie policies to financial analysis. Speaker of the Assembly Karen Bass has proposed legislation declaring the intent of the Legislature to crease such a commission as “an independent multijurisdictional body to, among other things, develop sentencing guidelines and provide a nonpartisan forum for sentencing policy development.” This is an important first step, but the California Legislature should next create the commission – not to merely express its intent.
We should support the development of a Sentencing Commission if we don't want to spend another $8 billion on prisoner healthcare; if we want to stop locking up marijuana user with members of the Mexican Mafia; if we think California would be better served by funding drug treatment facilities with social workers who earn $45,000 a year, instead of funding giant prison facilities with correctional officers who earn $90,000 a year; and if we think California should spend more educating than imprisoning our fellow citizens.
We need to stop the rhetoric that has created a steady increase of offenses and prison terms, and choose instead – through the creation of a Sentencing Commission – to be "smart on crime."
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