But instead of taking a muted approach in response — or attempting to work out some reforms behind the scenes — the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is gearing up for war, admitting nothing and saying the improprieties were on the part of investigators, not guards.

This is from Associated Press:

Inspector General Robert Barton said the California Correctional Peace Officers Association advised members not to cooperate and filed a lawsuit and collective bargaining grievance in a bid to hinder the investigation.

 

The union sent a letter last month to Gov. Jerry Brown and every state lawmaker in what Barton called “the latest strong-arm tactic” to obstruct the investigation and discredit the inspector general before the report was released.

 

Union President Chuck Alexander’s letter to Brown accuses Barton of taking a prosecutorial “burn a cop a week” approach to overseeing the corrections department. Union spokeswoman Nichol Gomez-Pryde said the union’s only interest is in protecting its members’ legal rights.

 

The report came more than a decade after the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation tried to stamp out a culture in which prison guards protect one another when they witness wrongdoing.

CCPOA’s hardball tactics reminiscent of Gray Davis era

The stance taken by the CCPOA was remindful of its tactics and attitude during Gray Davis’ nearly five-year run as governor. The prison guards union won a 2002 contract that not only provided big raises — 37 percent over five years for many union members — it also gave union officials a say in management. At a remarkable July 2003 Sacramento hearing, lawmakers heard testimony about how this made it difficult to prevent, much less punish, outrageous guard behavior similar to what’s being alleged at the High Desert prison. The San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time:

On Thursday, eight witnesses shared their versions of a controversy that began at the California Institution for Men in Chino (San Bernardino County) on May 9, 2002. In an alleged incident that included as many as 20 guards, some participating and some watching, five prisoners whose hands and feet were bound were slammed to the ground, beaten and kicked.

 

Internal affairs agents for the corrections system launched a criminal investigation, according to Special Agent Richard Feaster. A recording of an informant provided especially damning evidence, agents said Thursday. … But the probe quickly ran into trouble.

 

Using a clause in their contract with the state, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association began demanding that agents share the evidence being amassed against guards. Agents were concerned that the case would be compromised if union officials learned who key witnesses were.

 

The contract the CCPOA signed with Davis …  includes many … provisions, including allowing guards to obtain information being collected against them.

Schwarzenegger demanded, won concessions

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who succeeded Davis in the fall 2003 recall, fought the CCPOA tooth and nail and won back some of the concessions that Davis had made. This led the union to consider mounting a recall attempt against Schwarzenegger in 2007, but it eventually gave up.

In 2010, the CCPOA endorsed Jerry Brown for governor and was rewarded with a 2011 contract that prompted complaints from a Long Beach Press-Telegram editorial:

Brown’s deal reverses some reforms that were made under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, such as the requirement that guards meet physical fitness standards and that allows managers to take action against sick time abuse. To top it off, the deal includes a pay increase.

The recent state inspector general’s report came shortly after Jeffrey Beard announced he was resigning Jan. 1 as secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The former Pennsylvania prison official was brought in by Brown three years ago to shake up a dysfunctional culture, and he got high marks from the governor.

But Beard’s departure won’t be tidy, coming against a backdrop of the ugly fight playing out at the High Desert prison. Brown — like Davis, his former chief of staff — and his next prison boss will have to figure out how to treat a union that resists boundaries on its behavior.

“Until our prison conditions rival those of our forward deployed military, I will not be sympathetic to prisoners,” Gorell said.

In 2009, a federal three-judge panel forced California to address the state's prison overcrowding and “inhabitable living conditions.” The California Legislature has chosen to appropriate $315 million from the General Fund to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation “to address capacity needs, prison population levels, recidivism rates, and factors effecting crime levels.”

“I support this bill with a heavy heart,” Gorell said. “I do not want to spend this money on prisons. But the feds forced our hands.”

Gorell said when he served as a Deputy District Attorney in Ventura County, he traveled up and down the state looking at prisons. “While it wasn't how I would want to live, the conditions were befitting prisoners,” he said.

“I also saw men and women in uniform living in worse conditions,” Gorell added, “dozens to a tent, 130 degrees, for long periods of time.”

Gorell is a Lt. Commander in the United States Navy Reserve, and recently completed two one-year tours to the Middle East and Afghanistan. He told me there are still tens of thousands of “forward deployed” military, stationed in locations around the world where they can be called to action in a millisecond.

Gorell reminded Assembly colleagues the only reason they were debating the prison issue is because the federal government intervened on behalf of prisoners, and issued a court order requiring California to reduce what they deemed “prison overcrowding.”

“This is not a long term solution,” Gorell lamented.

Why does California care?

When the federal government intervened on behalf of prisoners, and issued a 2009 court order requiring California to reduce what they deemed “prison overcrowding,” it sent politicians into a frenzy and subsequent spending spree. But the Dec. 31, 2013 federally-imposed deadline looms large, now leaving limited options.

Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, actually compromised on their dueling prison bills this week. They amended Steinberg's SB 105 to reflect the changes, and moved it to the Assembly for a vote, where it passed 75-0.

By Sagar Jethani

After being threatened with contempt by a panel of federal judges for failing to sufficiently reduce the number of prisoners in California’s jails, Gov. Jerry Brown reluctantly unveiled a plan this month to further reduce the Golden State’s overcrowded prisons by another 9,000 inmates. Enthusiasm in Sacramento was in short supply.

Brown argued that court orders were forcing him to jeopardize public safety by transferring prisoners to county jails and offering some of them early release.

Prisons chief Jeffrey Beard was more direct, “The plan is ugly. We don’t like it.”

Two years ago, California’s prisons held twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold, and that led to serious problems. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata that California was violating prisoners’ Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. The Court estimated that an inmate in California’s prisons died every six to seven days due to inadequate medical care caused by overcrowding.

Suicidal inmates were forced to stand in metal cages for 24 hours without access to restrooms. California was ordered to reduce inmate populations over two years from 150,000 to 110,000. When Brown said this January that California had done enough to satisfy the court’s requirements, he was threatened with contempt unless he continued reducing prison rolls down to the mandated target.

Three strikes

How did California’s prisons get so crowded in the first place? Golden State voters contributed to this crisis by approving some of the most stringent sentencing measures in the nation, including the 1994 Three Strikes Initiative, Proposition 184. The law mandated 25-years-to-life in prison for three-time felons, even if the third “strike” was a nonviolent crime. Strict sentencing laws enjoy bipartisan support in Sacramento. Republican legislators exult in preaching a tough-on-crime mantra — especially to the older, white demographic that tends to vote for them. And Democrats are surprisingly among the loudest voices calling for tougher sentencing laws lest they be called-out for being soft on crime.

Enter the California Correction Peace Officer’s Association, CCPOA, better known as the prison guards union.

Thanks to the mandatory dues paid by its members, the union raises about $23 million a year, and spends about $8 million of it on lobbying. According to Joan Petersilia, a longtime observer of California’s correctional institutions, CCPOA’s lobbying goal is simple, “More prisoners lead to more prisons; more prisons require more guards; more guards means more dues-paying members and fund-raising capability; and fund-raising, of course, translates into political influence.”

And what does that influence lead to? Outrageous paychecks, for one thing. The average annual salary for prison guards nationally is about $45,000. California’s prison guards, however, pocket a cool $72,400 — 60 percent above the national average. But that doesn’t even take overtime pay into account. Once that’s factored in, California prison guards often make more than $100,000 per year. California’s governors routinely push these pay increases through an obliging Legislature.

The union has been one of the leading backers of tougher sentencing laws. It spent more than $100,000 to pass the original Three Strikes law. It dropped another $1 million in 2008 to defeat Proposition 5, which would have reduced sentences for nonviolent crimes and allocated more resources to treating drug addiction.

And it spent more than $1 million in 2004 to beat Proposition 66, which would have reduced the number of crimes that carry mandatory life sentences.

Politicians

Politicians are also on the menu. CCPOA spent nearly $2 million supporting Brown’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. The Legislature is a special beneficiary. Operating on the principle that the surest way to win a race is to bet on all the horses, as of Dec. 2012 the union had contributed campaign funds to every current state senator in California.

With all its influence and off-the-charts pay levels, you might think that California’s prison guards are among the nation’s best at what they do.

A two-volume report was issued last month by the independent Office of Inspector General detailing more than 117 cases of prison guard abuse in painstaking detail. Examples include guards planning prisoner assaults and murder, buying prisoners drugs and alcohol, groping and grappling prisoners and soliciting sex from prisoners — including juvenile prisoners.

The investigators accused the corrections department of sweeping these offenses under the rug. But with so many contributions to politicians, what’s the likelihood that any real reform will happen? Is it any wonder that between the humanitarian crisis caused by overcrowding, reduced funding for rehabilitation programs, and rank abuse by the very people entrusted to manage prisons, California’s recidivism rate is the highest in the nation — nearly double the average of all other states?

Smuggling

To show just how much power the prison guards union has in Sacramento, consider one of the topics covered in the inspector general’s report: smuggled cellphones used by prisoners to run drugs and plan new crimes. According to a legislative analysis in 2010, the main source of smuggled cellphones is — you guessed it — prison guards.

In response to demands for employee searches, the union cited a work requirement that its members be paid for any increase in “walk time” — the minutes it takes for guards to get from the front gate to their posts behind prison walls. Going through airport-style metal detectors, which require the removal of shoes, belts, and other items, easily could double that walk time, which would allow prison guards to collect an additional several million dollars of pay per year.

That’s right: prison guards would financially benefit from the inconvenience of having their illegal activities halted. Last year, 20 prison guards were fired or allowed to resign over the cellphone scandal, but neither Jerry Brown nor the Legislature openly challenged the absurdity of “walk time.”

Some will see in all this a vindication of their preconceived notions about unions. But privatization offers no easy cure, either. Consider a proposal floated last September by Correctional Corporation of America. Cash-strapped states would receive upfront payments of $250 million from CCA, which would purchase and run their prisons. In return, the states would guarantee CCA a 90 percent minimum occupancy rate in these prisons for at least 20 years.

The proposal was rightly blasted by watchdog groups, which pointed out that such a deal would create perverse incentives for lawmakers to pass California-style sentencing laws across the nation not to protect public safety, but to keep the money flowing by throwing as many people behind bars as possible.

Whether the beneficiary is a public sector union like CCPOA, or a private company like CCA, the profit motive creates dangerous incentives when combined with prisons. America imprisons more people than any other country, and California imprisons more people than any other state. Instead of coming up with new ways to tie profits to prisoners, we should be looking for ways to reduce the number of people behind bars.

Rehab

A good place to start is allocating funds away from guard salaries and new prison construction and into drug rehab programs to reduce recidivism. We should modify laws like Three Strikes, and legalize relatively harmless drugs like marijuana.

A step in the right direction was Proposition 36, which voters approved last November. It changed the law to impose a life sentence only when the third strike was “serious or violent.”

The outrageous salary increases and job protections the union has obtained should be overturned — by ballot measure, if necessary. The sanctity of contracts is all good and well, but despite this year’s balanced budget, California is still in a fiscal crisis from the pension crisis and other problems. If the people deem the continuance of such contracts to be against the state’s interest, they have the right to cancel them.

The union has learned to keep quiet in the latest round of debates, possibly because it fears becoming the target of a Scott Walker-style movement. But that doesn’t mean it has suddenly decided to pack it in. It is simply biding its time, waiting for the furor to subside before it goes back to business as usual.

(Many thanks to Tim Kowal for helping me understand some of the issues surrounding California’s broken prison system. Check out his blog to learn more.)

Sagar Jethani is a global marketing executive who studied political science and philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago and business at UCLA Anderson. He lives in Woodland Hills, California. This article is cross-posted from PolicyMic.

By Chris Reed

There are so many killer facts in the Bloomberg News story from Tuesday on how California went to hell that I barely know where to start. So many have never been exposed by the state’s mainstream media. (John Seiler blogged earlier on one of those killer findings from Bloomberg’s investigation.) I urge everyone to read the whole thing. Here is the striking opening:

“Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by voters. The state’s 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job.

“Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction. Today, the state’s highest-paid employees make far more than comparable workers elsewhere in almost all job and wage categories, from public safety to health care, base pay to overtime.”

Pulitzers usually go to much flashier work than exposing government profligacy, but this is Pulitzer-worthy journalism, for sure.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has set aside about $350,000 to pay several hundred corrections officers while they attend their union’s annual convention later this month in Las Vegas.

Union dues, of course, come from the tax-funded paychecks of union members.

As I reported last year, the guards partied down at the Rio Las Vegas. Here’s a YouTube of the kind of fun that goes on there at the expense of the California taxpayers.

Party hearty, boys!

August 4, 2011

The vote was 26-14, along party lines – except for one Republican vote from Sen. Sam Blakeslee (San Luis Obispo) – to ratify the six union contracts, which includes four new contracts with California Correctional Peace Officers. Only one more Republican vote is needed to pass Correa’s bill.

With one hour left in the day to lobby Senate Republicans, the CCPOA, which has given a great deal of money to both parties, will no doubt be reminding Republican Senators where some of their bread is buttered during the campaign season, in order to gain the additional vote needed for the correctional union contracts.

Sen. Pres. Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (Sacramento) described some debates in the like Senate like being in Alice In Wonderland and then proceeded to pummel Republicans. “Where is the commitment to actually reform something?” asked Steinberg.

But Republicans were not just critical of the union contracts for increasing in size by another $50 billion in the next five years – several Senators asked for a finalized budget first, and then agreed to sit down and negotiate union contracts.

Diamond Bar Republican Sen. Bob Huff commented that the deal scores little savings this year, then will hit hard down the road with massive increases. Huff said that the union contract increases would mean cuts to schools. “Why don’t you deliver this message to the schools – that this contract is more important than schools,” said Huff.

“This feels like a take-it-or-leave-it deal. I don’t feel negotiated with,” said Sen. Doug La Malfa (R-Butte). La Malfa said that the union contracts would leave the state $200 million short, but Steinberg challenged that amount and said the budget shortfall would only be $12 million, and added that “collective bargaining is under attack throughout the country.”

Former Governor Gray Davis gave the California Correctional Peace Officers Association — California’s prison guards — management control over the state’s prison system through the contracts he negotiated, and approved by the Legislature. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger  undid much of what Davis put into play, but now Gov. Jerry Brown may just reverse Schwarzeneger’s reforms and hand the keys to the state’s checkbook back to the correctional officers.

While many legislators would not mind richly remunerating actual public safety jobs, the list of jobs included in the “safety classes” is 41 pages long and includes such dangerous jobs as fingerprint specialists, mental health workers, parks and recreation employees, civil engineers, forestry and fish and game employees, and even the “shoemaking” and “culinary” instructors at the Youth Authority.

Included in the contracts is more vacation time for correctional officers, which adds up to nearly 19 weeks of accumulated leave time. The Legislative Analyst’s Office reported that the current vacation time is valued at $600 million.

The six union deals need two Senate Republican votes… we will update the story after 4:15 p.m. Watch it live on The California Channel.

UPDATE: Sen. Anthony Cannella (R-Ceres) flipped his “no” vote late this afternoon and ended up voting in favor of SB 151. Jessica Hsiang, Cannella’s communications director provided Cannella’s statement about his vote:

“The contracts ratified today were negotiated at the bargaining table, and they do represent concessions from the unions involved and significant savings to the state. However, our state’s massive unfunded liabilities demand swift action to address the long-term sustainability of our state’s public pension system.

“Clearly, real pension reform will not be achieved at the bargaining table; it must be achieved through statute or by a vote of the people. That’s the reason I joined my colleagues in proposing a package of much-needed reforms that includes implementing 401K-style pension plans, capping final pension payouts, ensuring employees contribute their fair share to health care coverage and ending pension-spiking practices.

“Today, I received assurances from public-employee union leaders that they will engage in an earnest conversation about real pension reform, and I remain committed to finding agreement on a long-term solution to the multibillion-dollar unfunded pension liability California today faces.”

If the pension reform assurances from the public-employee unions are so earnest, why didn’t the entire Senate Republican caucus vote to ratify the contracts?

Katy Grimes

MAY 2, 2011