Proposition 57, which amends the California Constitution to make it easier for some felons to win release from state prison, coasted to victory Tuesday, winning more than 60 percent of the vote in initial statewide tallies and giving Gov. Jerry Brown a triumph on an issue — criminal justice reform — that he sees as crucial to his legacy.

The Brown-orchestrated, well-funded Yes on 57 campaign crushed lightly funded opponents, led by the California District Attorneys’ Association. A ballot measure description that used technical, arcane definitions to say the proposition only applied to “nonviolent” felons made victory close to a sure thing. District attorneys’ argument that the definition included many crimes involving violence, including sexual violence — while factual — got little traction.

But for Proposition 57 to be the policy triumph that Brown envisions, it will require improved performance from a state agency that’s faced frequent criticism from oversight agencies, judges and activists for decades: the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Under the ballot measure, the corrections department will be directed to give sentence credits to inmates for progress toward rehabilitation as judged by behavior, educational achievements and other factors. The credits are awarded after a formal, documented evaluation process.

With the high-profile problems the corrections department has faced because of overcrowding and prisoner health care so poor that it led to the intervention of a federal judge, officials can deflect blame. A punitive “three strikes and you’re out” justice system overfilled prisons, and governors and legislators balked at building new facilities and adequately funding prison medical needs.

Corrections department rapped for rehab, parole woes

But a review of the Office of the California State Auditor’s records show far-ranging critiques of the corrections department on many other issues as well. Since 2006, the state auditor has issued more than 50 official evaluations of state government performance in which the corrections agency is cited. Most are critical, including two audits that involve tasks exactly like or very similar to those that Proposition 57 expects the agency to handle competently.

A 2011 report looked at Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, or COMPAS, a software program that officials said would help them identify inmates most likely to be successfully rehabilitated and reintegrated into public life.

The report said COMPAS was not used to evaluate all eligible inmates, despite initial promises; was not implemented consistently at the 12 “reception centers” where decisions are made about which prisons should receive new convicts; and faced resistance from corrections officials who didn’t think it was worth their time. The audit said there was a lack of transparency with how COMPAS was implemented and a lack of accountability as to whether it really worked in increasing rehabilitation of prisoners.

A 2008 report said the corrections department regularly ignored state law when processing prisoners for parole. When an inmate is paroled, a discharge review report is required in which parole agents argue for or against release; their recommendations can be overturned by supervisors. Auditors found such reports were not on record for “4,981, or 9 percent, of the 56,329 parolees discharged between January 1, 2007, and March 31, 2008.” They cited concerns that the violent criminal histories of some of these parolees was not considered before their release.

The audit also found examples of the agency breaking its own guidelines in cases in which supervisors overruled parole agents’ recommendations and ordered release of inmates “without documenting the reasons for their decisions.” It also found evidence that supervisors had unilaterally revised discharge reports prepared by parole agents.

The corrections department mostly rejected the 2011 criticisms on its rehabilitation evaluation program. It accepted and agreed with the 2008 report on the need for 100 percent compliance on discharge reports and on the need to “prohibit unit supervisors and district administrators from altering discharge review reports prepared by others.”

The 50-plus audits citing the corrections agency since 2006 can be found on the state auditor’s website: https://www.bsa.ca.gov/reports/agency/22

Richard Stefanik also died while in police custody in September, and it could be said the cause was a broken heart. In November 2014, Stefanik was arrested for the murder of his wife of 58 years. She was suffering from cancer, and by most accounts it was a failed murder-suicide.

The death of Stefanik, in county jail, was also ruled natural.

Ornelas, 47, and Stefanik, 81, were among the 744 individuals who died last year in the custody of law enforcement or a state agency, an increase of 8 percent over the average in the last decade. The deceased included 47 women. One in five were either convicted of homicide or were awaiting trial on homicide-related charges.

Half the deaths were determined to be due to natural causes, according to data from the California Department of Justice. Thirty-four of the deaths were classified as accidental, including two by hanging or strangulation and a drug overdose.

There were also 62 deaths ruled suicides, and 96 deaths, or 13 percent, were determined to have resulted from justifiable shootings by law enforcement. One-hundred fifty-eight cases are pending investigation, 41 of them connected to an arrest in progress and 51 of them at state facilities.

In-Custody Deaths

In 2005, 62 percent of custodial deaths were determined to be natural, and 8 percent justifiable, according to a report from the state’s Attorney General.

In-custody deaths have drawn national attention following last year’s high-profile cases of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Sandra Bland outside Houston.

Gray died while being transported to jail by police officers. Six officers are charged with murder in his death. The first case ended in a mistrial in December.

Bland’s death was ruled a jail cell suicide by hanging after she was stopped for a traffic violation and was taken in for allegedly assaulting a police officer.

Dubious classifications of death

The classifications for the recently released data in California, though, are often dubious and open to interpretation.

Among the deaths ruled suicides were those of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who in December killed 14 people in a terrorist attack on a social services office in San Bernardino County. News accounts have said the couple was killed in a shootout with police.

Also included in the death total are homicides committed by inmates, mostly referred to as accidental. And the jurisdiction is sometimes hazy in the reporting.

For example, Choi Saeteurn, 68, was allegedly beaten to death by a 35-year-old inmate in January 2015 in Sacramento County’s main jail.  In records, the death is attributed to the Azusa Police Department, located 400 miles south of Sacramento.

Also, of the 47 women’s deaths, four were attributed to suicide, including Malik’s. Six were determined to be justifiable homicide, including that of Angela Slack, who was arrested on misdemeanor prostitution charges and whose relatives posted a graphic YouTube video of her in her last days alleging that Slack was abused by police. Slack’s cause of death is listed as hanging/strangulation.  

One female death was deemed accidental, that of Sara Corliss, who died Jan. 2, 2015, and whose death in a Los Angeles County Jail is still being investigated.

In an email, the state Attorney General’s office said that each department is responsible for investigating their own custodial deaths, including the detail of those deaths.  

The California State Auditor in January released a list of agencies that have failed to address perceived problems in their operations. The state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has failed for six years to implement changes that would give inmates more supervision and to protect the safety of both inmates and corrections officers.

More than half of custodial deaths since the early 2000s have occurred in facilities run by the state.

Solano prison, Vacaville

The good news is that the California Department of Corrections offers program to help inmates become opticians.

The bad news is that there are four different state statutes that allow the state to refuse to license an ex-offender as an optician, established in explicit language in the law.

It’s the riddle of reform, as California’s prison inmate population dropped 17 percent between 2005 and 2014 while the number of individuals on parole dipped 61 percent.

Where do they go, though?

Ineligible for employment

Both stats are relatively sunny reflections on Gov. Brown and the state Assembly’s effort to reduce both crime and criminals.

Among other things, the state hiked credits toward early release for non-violent and minimum custody offenders and established a new parole system for non-violent second time criminals.

But if you’re looking for a job and have been convicted of a crime involving a controlled substance – and this includes marijuana – forget about getting work on an ambulance crew, a litter van, or a wheelchair van. You could become a real estate broker, a midwife or a speech pathologist, but you’d have to make a case for it.

Any misdemeanor will keep you from working at as a smog check station attendant, a locksmith, a repo man or board member of a humane society.

The information comes from a database assembled by the American Bar Association. Users can search dictates in each state for how a conviction of a variety of crimes can affect a person’s ability to get a job, a business license, a judicial position, housing, education and 10 other endeavors.

The findings can be comforting – someone with a felony conviction can’t serve on a grand jury – and amusing, as a felon is also ineligible to participate in the cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions.

Contradictions in law

The database also exposes the contradictions in the law regarding employment restrictions on inmates. In California, “not much work has been done on fixing the employment and licensure issues,” said W. David Ball, an associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.

“These laws are generally written broadly, and there are laws that are easy to understand, like you would not want someone who was involved with financial fraud to be a CPA,” Ball said. “But it makes no sense that someone convicted of drunk driving can’t be a cosmetologist.”

The ABA database is part of a broad effort to loosen restrictions on ex-offenders. There is a national move to create a bill in all states forcing them to examine their laws regarding ex-offenders and employment. Advocates claim passage would bring recidivism rates down.

In California, 61 percent of felons returned to prison within three years, according to a 2014 annual state report on recidivism.

The study found that “inmates committed to prison for property crimes consistently recidivate at a higher rate than those committed for other types of crimes, including crimes against persons, drug crimes, and ‘other’ crimes.”

The move to a national retooling of restrictions on ex-offenders is not welcomed by all parts of the legal community.

Too soft on criminals?

“This was like a liberal do-gooder thing,” James Bopp, a Terre Haute, Ind., lawyer told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month. “The law is constructed in a way to grossly favor the criminal who is seeking relief from these collateral effects of their conviction.”

The passage in November of Proposition 47 pruned the ranks of the incarcerated even more, as the law softened criminal classifications for some crimes including drug possession and shoplifting. It also made the theft and reception of stolen goods under $950 a misdemeanor.

Under Prop. 47, part of the projected $400 million to $700 million projected to be saved statewide by cutting down on the state’s incarceration bill is to be spent on mental health and substance abuse services.

Such services, while they can help treat an ex-offender, also exclude the ex-offender community: A misdemeanor conviction excludes a person from becoming a vocational nurse, treating an adolescent in a drug treatment program or obtaining a psychiatric technician license.

Additional legislation

Lawmakers are still making adjustments to the effects of the bill, plugging holes and shaping the mandate. Some are concerned that a provision in the measure would allow the theft of a gun to be lumped in with stealing a bag of Twizzlers in the under $950 category.

A measure authored by state Sen. Cathleen Galgiani is winding its way through the statehouse, seeking to fix that, making the theft of any firearm a crime not subject to the parameters of Prop. 47.

Another bill, SB205, looks to fund a university study of the effects of Prop. 47.

Still another bill, SB527, seeks to allocate money from the expected corrections savings for truancy and dropout prevention, funding over four jobs for that task alone.

Collateral consequences are also often unintended consequences, said Ball, the associate professor at the Santa Clara law school.

“I’d like to raise the bar higher so you have to make a case for ‘why not?’ rather than reasons to impose,” Ball said. “These collateral consequences really do prevent people from starting over.”

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com. His website is www.Avalanche50.com

Yet overall state prison-guard compensation is up sharply. Reported the San Diego U-T:

Overtime hit a six-year high last year, allowing hundreds of prison system employees to more than double their pay. That’s created a situation in which more than a third of officers make more than $100,000 a year.

The payroll costs for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation have grown $248 million per year higher than they were in 2009, a 5.3 percent increase. During the same period, the population under supervision fell 38 percent.

Going back to 2011, even then California prison guards made twice the pay of their counterparts in Texas, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “$71,000 a year, compared with $31,000.”

The California guards’ pay is even higher now — with fewer prisoners to watch behind bars.

The question now is how long this can last. Although a key part of the Democratic Party’s coalition, the prison guards union also competes for money against other public-employee unions, such as the California Teachers Association.

As is being seen in other instances, such as Latinos objecting to the low quality of state schools their kids attend, the Democratic coalition has many fissures. Factions will be fighting over budgets and policy.

During the high-crime era of the 1980s and 1990s, the prison guards held great clout in the state. But with California crimes hitting 50-year lows, as well as sentencing reform initiatives such as Proposition 47, the guards are not as powerful as they once were. Their recent pay increases may become large targets for other factions.