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Prison Bills Being Rushed Through California Legislature the Product of Politics, Time, and Lack of Will

By Frank D.Russo

The Sacramento Bee editorial “Rotten Sausage: Prison deal is lawmaking at its worst” captures the flavor of the “Special Session” Joint Senate and Assembly Hearing held last night until 9:30 p.m. They have correctly not used the term “wurst.” That would be an insult to those who love the culinary delight.

It has been apparent for some time that the efforts of the Scwharzenegger Administration have been a day late and a dollar short. The Governor hastily called the special session of the legislature as more bad news was breaking from the federal courts and other investigations as we pointed out in a series of articles earlier in the California Progress Report. Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton wrote that the whole thing “has the look of a political move” back in June when the Governor set the special session just as legislators were about to depart on their summer recess. Time has unfortunately proved him to be correct.

So, without a bill introduced in the legislature until they reconvened on August 7, and with that $6 billion plan boldly trumpeted at that late stage in the legislative calendar, the Democrats, with some agreement by some Republicans, have come up with a $1 billion plan of their own that lacks many important details and leaves much up to refinements when the new legislature meets in January. Schwarzenegger’s proposals are not only politically motivated to save his own skin, after having three heads of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation appointed by him in the last few months because of rapid departures, they are “not ready for prime time” as one Democratic legislator said. It reminds one of the whole way that the bonds were floated as a proposal by Schwarzenegger in the Spring. Massive amounts, maximum publicity and headlines, and then the reality.

The reality is that most Californians do not really want to pay for the cost of massive prison building. There simply is not the political will for it. They would not pass a bond for it and that is why it is not one of the items on the ballot. Instead a Rube Goldberg “revenue bond” is put together where one part of the state contracts to build the prisons and then the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation then leases them. What’s the revenue to pay for them? It comes right out of the general fund. Republican Senator McClintock, who sits on the Senate Committee on this deal asked incredulously “Where does the revenue come from? We’re surely not going to rent these cells to prisoners, certainly at the cost of $36,000 per year.” He is correct. The revenue bonds are only used to short circuit the need to go to the voters for approval.

At the hearing virtually all the bills had amendments offered by the authors or the need for refinements pointed out by other legislators. Many of the amendments the authors sought to make had not been reduced to actual language, but were “thoughts.”

The Bee is correct when they conclude their editorial:

So why not wait until the regular session in January to draft proper bills with sites and details? In the end, after scalding, scraping and cutting up the meat of the governor's prison package in an "emergency" special session, legislators produced two rotten sausages and two so-so ones. Better to have produced none at all.

The Democrats in the legislature could not get enough votes for SB 1547 by Senator Romero that would have paroled geriatric and medically incapacitated prisoners who are no longer a threat to the public, as we reported on a couple of days ago. Clearly some Democrats do not want to be considered soft on crime and couldn’t have voted for that measure or other sentence reform proposals. So, its been patched up and the details will have to be worked out next year. Hopefully not too much damage will be done and money wasted by these four or more bills that will be voted on by the full Senate and Assembly in the rush to get out of here. They should scrap most of the bills.

When you start out with half baked proposals from the Governor, introduced at the last moment, and expect legislators to craft a solution while they are dealing with literally thousands of other bills, what do you expect. Some have suggested that the Governor does not mind the Federal courts taking over the prisons. Maybe that’s what he really has in mind. Senator Romero, who has been working on prison issues seriously for years said the Governor should have put his package together in October when reports came out about a serious overcrowding problem and that the state was on a course to run out of beds if nothing was done. (Of course, we were in the middle of a "Special Election" at the time, called by the Governor, and distracting him and others from dealing with these problems.)

More later about the hearing and what the legislature does. They are reconvening in 15 minutes for the second to last day and time does not permit a lengthier discourse, just as it does not allow for good public policy to be made in what is left on the calendar.

Read the excellent articles in today’s press and articles we have published previously that are in our archives for further information.

Posted on August 30, 2006

Comments

Oh, Good Grief! I am officially past disgusted! These people are so concerned with keeping their jobs that they are refusing to do their jobs. In order to avoid appearing "soft on crime", they are willing to allow a broken, overburdened, mismanaged system to spiral yet further into disorder instead of having the will and courage to say "This makes sense, and is a neccessary step and so I will do what is right and vote with my brain and my concsience, rather than pander to an inaccurate public perception."
People are DYING in our prisons for want of proper medical attention.
Correctional Officers and inmates face a patently unsafe environment because it is not possible to have ANY system packed to nearly twice its operating capacity and have it function properly. Particularly disturbing is the fact that large numbers of violent offenders are housed in a "barracks" arrangement in gymnasiums... triple rows of beds in rooms not designed as living quarter and in which there is no effective way to control movement. If an incident erupts in a "Dorm" there is no safe way to stop it.
Our prisons are understaffed, Correctional Officers are working double shifts, back to back, on a routine basis.
This is NOT SAFE. A tired man is more likely to either overreact or underreact and either circumstance is dangerous. A good deal of the trouble within the prison's health care system can be traced to understaffed infirmaries, leading to inadequate care and the outrageous cost of contracting to outside providers.
The laundry list of problems is seemingly endless but the solutions are there... Make use of the existing parole system by releasing eligible inmates who have participated in the programs and have clean disciplinary records, stop housing violent/problem inmates with inmates who are non-violent and who have not presented themselves to be disciplinary problems...
Stop requiring parolees to return to the county in which they were convicted... that just puts them back into the same environment they came from and reduces the chances of successfully completing their parole program.
Fill the thousands of vacant positions that are at the root of the horrific understaffing and the attendant risks and cost.
The solutions are there,if only our elected officials would, collectively, grow a set!

Posted by: Delia at September 6, 2006 06:52 AM

Delia was right in 2006 and is right now. Still nothing has really changed....
1. Let prisoners, who have participated in school or worked in jobs (at aprox. 18 cent per hour)in prison, a substantial break.
2. Process paroles on time and let parole be decided on the prisoner's time served and behavior in prison, not pleading past victoms who want more vengence than was sentenced.
3. Parole out of the county that the prisoner lived in.
4. Don't release prisoners with no time... it is the wrong message.
5. Create an environment that teaches prisoners to be tax paying citizens when they get out. Encourage education and work habits by shortening those who do shortened sentences.
6.Encourage family envolvment to promote a reason for their improvement.

NONE OF THIS IS BEING DONE...WHY????

Posted by: Don Pettus at June 1, 2008 11:24 PM

NONE OF THIS IS BEING DONE...WHY????

Posted by: Don Pettus at June 1, 2008 11:24 PM

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