Nearly 10,000 inmates could leave California prisons within four years, another consequence of the state’s long struggle with the judicial system over the way it incarcerates convicts. 

“As the state prison population comes close to exceeding a court-mandated limit, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is pursuing new regulations that aim to get more inmates paroled more quickly over time,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “The proposed rules, originating from voter approval of Proposition 57 in November and unveiled [March 24], would allow ‘nonviolent’ felons to first seek parole at the conclusion of the base term for their primary offense, before serving additional time for other charges and enhancements that can add years to their sentence.”

A vote’s consequences

Through Prop. 57, new regulations were slated to come into effect instituting a credit system for inmates hoping to reduce their sentences. “The main regulation is the credit earning system, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,” KXTV noted. “For milestone completion credits, an inmate can earn them when they complete a specific education or career training program that’s also attached to attendance and performance requirements. Prop. 57 increases the amount of time an inmate can earn for these types of credits from six to 12 weeks per year.”

“Rehabilitative Achievement Credits are where inmates can participate in approved self-help groups or other activities promoting the rehabilitating or positive behavioral changes in an inmate. Inmates are able to earn up to four weeks of these credits annually. The last are Educational Merit Credits where inmates who successfully complete and achieve a GED, high school diploma, college degree or alcohol and drug counseling certifications.”

Working the numbers

Although the state’s prison population is closing in on the court-mandated limit of around 116,000, the new regulations must still be approved by California regulators. “If that happens, parole eligibility would change April 12,” KSBY noted. “There would be a public comment period. The early release would be phased in starting May 1, while the public review is underway. Final approval is possible by October.” In another shift, the Associated Press reported, the rules “would let the state phase out a long-running program that currently keeps nearly 4,300 inmates in private prisons in other states.”

That regime came under criticism last year as the federal government withdrew similar efforts. “California has transferred prisoners to private institutions, some of them in other states, for more than five years to relieve overcrowding in state prisons, but state, and local, use of them is beginning to be questioned,” the Chronicle reported last year. “One Bay Area lawmaker has called for the state to stop sending inmates to prisons far from their families or California inspectors, and another legislator is moving to stop cities and counties in California from contracting with private prisons to hold federal immigration detainees.”

Parole push

Continued pressure to limit action on some rules could come from law enforcement. “Police and prosecutors opposed the move for easier parole, arguing it would put dangerous offenders back on the streets too soon,” Voice of America recalled. “The new rules also change the process that prosecutors and victims use to object to early parole, doing away with lengthy formal parole hearings in favor of written statements. Prosecutors say victims have the right to be heard before any decision for parole is made.”

The new rule on parole “remains the top concern for the California District Attorneys Association,” San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, the group’s president, indicated to the Associated Press. “Under the changes, prosecutors and victims would have 30 days to object in writing to the earlier paroles. It’s a much different process than the hours-long hearings used to consider parole for life-term inmates such as followers of cult leader Charles Manson, for instance, and the governor will have no role in the largely administrative decisions.”

But the reality propelling interest in the new measure is that California has proven unable to effectively run its prison system the way that courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have demanded.

Major changes

Proposition 47 landed on the ballot with the backing of San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and former San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne. If the measure passes, the most frequent current crimes that carry felony convictions will be downgraded to misdemeanors. Prison time will be lowered, too, for such crimes to one year at most from the current three-year maximum.

That, as the Los Angeles Times reported, would be good news for Californians convicted of “drug possession, petty theft, possession of stolen goods, shoplifting, forgery and writing bad checks.” Those crimes made up 58,000 of the Golden State’s 202,000 felony convictions (based on 2012 figures, the most recent available). “Analysts say about 40,000 such cases would be reduced to misdemeanors; the initiative exempts offenses involving more than $950 and people with criminal records that include violence or sex offenses.”

The arguments for and against Prop. 47 haven’t surprised many California residents. On the one hand, it has long been common knowledge that California’s incarcerated population is high — by absolute measures, and relative to other states’ levels. In a black eye for Gov. Jerry Brown, his administration has been ensnared by the courts in a complex and awkward process called “realignment,” a way of shifting inmates from crowded state prisons into the county jail system.

On the other hand, Californians have not forgotten their state’s more sensational and frightening crimes. One of the worst even received mention during the recent gubernatorial debate between Brown and Neel Kashkari, his Republican challenger.

To ease overcrowding, California released Jerome Sidney DeAvila from prison; soon thereafter, in 2013 he committed a heinous crime involving rape and murder. The state’s police chiefs’ association has decried Prop. 47, saying the “dangerous and radical” measure will “endanger Californians.”

Easing up on convictions and sentencing would give California’s justice system a much-needed reprieve as it struggles to obey court orders to de-crowd. Yet it would be certain to ratchet up the risk of more violent crime — perhaps to a historic degree. In short, Prop. 47 has become associated with two different outcomes, one which many Californians desire, and one which none do.

An unprecedented coalition

With the measure poised between competing outcomes, its fate in November may come down to a public relations campaign. Oftentimes, ballot measures sink or swim depending on how voters view their fiscal implications.

Not so with Prop. 47. Although it would save the state some money, the amount recouped — a few hundred million dollars — would be a relative trifle given the size of California’s budget of more than $100 billion a year for the general fund.

That has placed a premium on presentation for Prop. 47’s key supporters. In fact, the coalition of activists and public figures behind Prop. 47 has raised eyebrows nationwide — suggesting that America’s traditional political battle lines have been scrambled when it comes to criminal justice reform.

Liberal and progressive support for a softer approach to crime has, predictably, given Prop. 47 a substantial push; George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center, based in Washington, D.C., kicked in $1 million.

At the same time, observers took special notice when former Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, also a 2012 presidential candidate, teamed with billionaire Wayne Hughes to promote Prop. 47 in an opinion piece for the Times. If conservative-heavy states in the South could reform their own prison systems, claimed Gingrich and Hughes, surely California could as well.

The voters will have their say on Nov. 4.

By Katy Grimes

You’ve heard of the Millionaire Next Door? Now meet the Criminal Next Door.

In what appears to be a nod to the powerful prison guards union, California is shunning sending prison inmates to lower cost, out-of-state prisons to reduce the overcrowded prison population. Instead, it’s releasing “non-violent,” “non-sexual,” “low-level” criminals out onto the streets and into minor parole programs.

In the 2006 class-action case Coleman vs. Schwarzenegger, a three-judge U.S. District Court ordered a large cut in the prison population. It found that overcrowded prison conditions were the cause of severely inadequate inmate health care. The order also imposed a population cap on California’s prisons.

Under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California sent prisoners to prisons in other states. The out-of-state prison cost savings over what it costs per bed in a California prison was significant. But since Gov. Jerry Brown was elected, this practice has been curtailed. Outsourcing of the state’s prisoners on a large scale apparently is not a politically feasible option for the Brown administration.

“Prison realignment” has been in the news since 2010, the year Brown was elected. In office, he immediately was faced with an ongoing federal court order to deal with California’s overcrowded prisons. But what exactly is prison realignment, what was it supposed to do, and is it working?

“Realignment” shift in thinking

In 2011, AB 109, the prison realignment law, was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Brown. AB 109 was supposed to shift “low-level,” “non-violent,” and “non-sexual” inmates from state prisons to county jails. Many inmates then were shifted to county probation departments for post-release supervision.

But AB 109 also required some felons released from prison be placed on post-release community supervision instead of state parole. A largely ignored result of AB 109 is that nearly half of these “non-violent offenders” had previously been incarcerated for serious crimes. But parole supervision is now based entirely on an inmate’s current conviction, not on cumulative crimes for which he had served prison time in the past.

Before the realignment law was passed, parole violators were transferred to state prisons, where they faced up to a year in custody. This no longer happens under prison realignment.

Release versus out-of-state prisons

Instead of releasing prisoners, California could reduce its corrections costs significantly by transferring inmates to lower-cost facilities out of state. “Expanding this strategy by transferring an additional 25,000 low- to medium-security inmates to such facilities—5,000 per year for five years—would result in an estimated savings of between $111 million and $120 million for the first year of the prisoner transfer plan, and between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion in savings by the end of year five,” according to a study by the Reason Foundation.

The study continued, “Based on correctional partnership experiences across the nation and the globe, California could reasonably and conservatively expect to realize cost savings of between 5 and 15% from outsourcing its correctional services. Applying this savings range to the state’s current (Fiscal Year 2009-10) corrections operating budget of $8,233,620,000 yields estimated savings of between $412 million and $1.24 billion per year….

“The potential savings may be even greater than this. First, California prison guards’ salaries and benefits are higher than those of their counterparts in other states, so contracting should realize greater personnel cost savings (particularly from fringe benefits) than in other places.

“Second, there is a large discrepancy in CDCR’s self-reported average costs per inmate per day and other data the agency has reported on its operational budget and inmate population, suggesting that the state may be underreporting its true per diem costs. California’s self-reported average cost per inmate per day is $133, but the cost calculated by simply dividing the correctional operating budget by the number of inmates is $162. By contrast, as noted above, the per diem rate received by private firms in recent contracts ranges from $60 to $75.”

Yet, California sends a much higher percentage of repeat offenders back to prisons and jails than other states.

Releasing prisoners has not worked

Fast forward to last week. Rather than using out-of-state prisons to help reduce California’s prison population, Brown’s administration told the federal court that the state Legislature would have to agree to dramatically restructure California’s corrections system.

Brown, under a threat of contempt of court by the federal judges if he did not implement a plan to meet the prison population cap by December, submitted a late-night report.

“In a 46-page brief filed shortly before midnight Thursday, state officials outlined how they would reduce the prison population by about 10,000 inmates over the next year, hoping to satisfy a three-judge panel that last month blasted the governor for failing to comply with a 2009 order requiring California to reduce its prison population to about 110,000 by this summer,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.

California’s 33 prisons currently house 119,506 inmates. But the prisons were designed for 79,959 inmates. The federal court has ordered another 9,500 inmates cut by Dec. 31.

Brown recently filed a motion to vacate or modify the reduction order, but it was denied by the federal court.

Some rapists, molesters doing little or no time

Brown signed AB 109 only two years ago to “stop the costly, ineffective and unsafe ‘revolving door’ of lower-level offenders and parole violators through our state prisons.”

Republicans fought realignment, and now are focused on the many serious problems caused by it.

Due to sweeping changes in California’s criminal justice system, paroled rapists, molesters and other sex offenders statewide are often doing little or no jail time for violating the terms of their release, according to state records and interviews with parole agents, according to Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber.

The law also prevents habitual criminals convicted of new felonies such as assault, auto theft, drug dealing, identity theft, fraud and commercial burglary from receiving prison sentences. Instread the offenders are get sentences in overcrowded county jails, probation or “treatment” in county-managed rehabilitation programs, according to the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

Mentally ill inmates

On Tuesday, Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, told reporters he wanted more money spent on the Integrated Services for Mentally Ill Parolees program. But his plan would not be considered by the District Court as part of the overcrowding order. The program is run by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which oversees the prison system.

“Fifteen hundred and two individuals have been enrolled in the program,” Steinberg said. “Only 359, or 24 percent, are re-incarcerated or rearrested.”

Steinberg’s plan also calls for more money to be provided for mental health services in the community, including 2,000 crisis treatment beds in a neighborhood setting, KCRA Channel 3 reported.

Steinberg said the funding would come from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); California’s Proposition 63, the 2004 initiative that increased mental health spending; and the state general fund.

Early release or transfers to out-of-state prisons?

It appears that the Brown administration is ignoring the viable option of transferring prisoners to out-of-state prisons. Steinberg’s plan to address the important issue of prisoners with mental illness is an important component to prison overcrowding, and should be considered by the federal court as addressing the overcrowding issue.

Brown’s administration has to submit a report by July 30 on what actions have been undertaken to identify inmates who might be candidates for early release or are unlikely to re-offend.

However, the federal judges stated that if California does not reduce the prison population to the mandated level by the July 30 deadline, “this system will permit defendants to nevertheless comply with the order through the release of low-risk prisoners.”

By Joseph Perkins

California faces a Friday deadline to schedule the early release of hundreds, if not thousands, of state prison inmates. The deadline was imposed two weeks ago by a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which determined that the Golden State has made insufficient progress in reducing the nation’s worst prison overcrowding.

In May last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Ninth Circuit’s 2009 court order that California reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of capacity, a level above which, the High Court agreed, constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.”

California made initial progress toward meeting the lower court’s June 2013 deadline, with the state inmate population shrinking by 4,000 a month as of last October, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of state prison population reports.

However, monthly declines have since slowed to fewer than 1,000 a month as most low-level offenders — convicts sentenced for non-violent, non-sexual and “non-serious” crimes — have been turned out of state prisons.

That makes it difficult for California to identify a substantial number of inmates remaining in the state prison system who, as the Ninth Circuit panel put it two Fridays ago, are “unlikely to reoffend or who might otherwise be candidates for early release.”

That’s why state officials informed the lower court that California intends to petition for a higher ceiling on the state prison population of 145 percent of capacity, rather than 137.5 percent.

But even if the court approved the higher capacity — a doubtful proposition — it is unlikely California would even reach that more lenient target. That’s because the state is in the process of ending the practice, initiated in 2006 by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, of housing inmates in out-of-state private prisons to ease in-state overcrowding.

The Department of Corrections reports that there currently are some 9,300 California convicts serving their time in such states as Arizona, Oklahoma and Mississippi.

The state plans to bring all of them back to California by 2016, beginning with 2,000 inmates housed in an Oklahoma correctional facility that will be returned to this state’s overcrowded prison system by the end of 2013.

It remains to be see if California reconsiders its plan to end its contracts with out-of-state prisons in the wake of the deadline challenge it faces this Friday, and the considerably more daunting deadline that awaits a mere ten months from now, when the state’s prison population must be no more than 137.5 percent of capacity.

The nation’s worst prison overcrowding would not be so bad had the Democrat-controlled state government not bowed to pressure from the politically influential California Correctional Peace Officers Association (which represents prison guards employed at the 33 state prisons) to shutter California’s private prisons.

Indeed, over the past decade, the state government has cancelled contracts with Corrections Corporation of America, Cornell Corrections and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut), resulting in the closure of seven private correctional facilities here in California.

Those private prisons would be most useful in helping the state to comply with the federal court order under the state’s prison system is currently operating.