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Fiscal Savings and Medical Release Bill Presents Schwarzenegger With Rare Opportunity

By Beatrice Smith-Dyer

As Governor Schwarzenegger sifts through the bills before him the next few hours and days, he will find a rare opportunity to alleviate both the prison crowding and budget deficit our state has had to confront this year. This opportunity comes in Assembly Bill AB 1539 (Krekorian), The Fiscal Savings and Medical Release Bill, which streamlines the existing medical release process for people in prison who are terminally ill, relieving the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) of high medical costs incurred in caring for this population. AB 1539 also extends the reach of the law to include permanently medically incapacitated people in prison.

I am currently imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility, one of the two world’s largest women’s prisons, both here in California. Now that the state’s prison healthcare system is under federal receivership, it is common knowledge that medical care here is a joke. Since 2000, I have volunteered in the prison hospice, and have been a peer counselor there since 1996. I’ve seen so many people back there die this past decade. A young lady here recently passed away, all of a sudden. It doesn’t matter how old or young we are – everyone faces death. Some happen to know when their time is coming.

The existing medical release law was enacted in 1997 because prisons were never intended to act as long-term healthcare providers for terminally ill people in prison. Currently, if a CDCR doctor diagnoses someone with six months or less to live, they can initiate a process involving the CDCR Secretary, the Board of Parole Hearings, or both, to recall their sentence if they agree the person does not pose a threat to public safety. Recently, a lack of notification procedures and directives to medical staff have meant people passing away before the process is complete.

My work as a hospice volunteer is important, but AB 1539 gives people who know their time is coming a chance at dying at home with family, and promotes fiscal responsibility. I don’t know if there’s anything more important.

AB 1539 is a common sense way to address prison crowding. People inside and outside of prison know that building more prisons doesn’t do anything for the population, doesn’t do anything for the medical, and taxes every part of our existence in prison. The recent legislation to add more prison beds is just another way the system has failed us. We know this; the three-judge panel knows this; the taxpayers and our advocates know this. In the past, the CDCR’s response has been to retain a person beyond their release date if they don’t have somewhere to send them. By streamlining the medical release process, AB 1539 will allow interested individuals and advocates to assist in finding placements for people who are terminally ill or permanently incapacitated before their release date, in order that their liberty not be compromised.

AB 1539 also will help the state balance our budget. The cost of people returning home to die is significantly less than keeping someone under 24-hour-watch by prison guards at the hospital. We recently had someone at the hospital in a coma for 30 days, and who had signed a form not wanting to be taken off the machine. Medical care for terminally ill and permanently incapacitated people in prison is extremely expensive—about $120,000 a year. According to a study by the Assembly Committee on Appropriations in 2007, the medical release law will result in minor absorbable costs to the CDCR, and these costs will be offset greatly by savings from the release of this population. This is a common sense approach to public safety that many other states across the country have taken.

The Legislature has taken leadership this year and in the past to move in a positive direction. While the Governor previously has vetoed a predecessor to AB 1539, he has since termed “ludicrous” in 2005 the state’s lack of process for releasing someone in prison who is brain-dead at a cost of more than $30,000 a day, and earlier this year signaled that such policy could be an approach to overcrowding he would support. AB 1539 presents the perfect opportunity for the Governor to take action that will benefit California families and taxpayers across the state.

Beatrice Smith-Dyer, currently imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility, has volunteered in the prison hospice since 2000, and served as a peer counselor there since 1996.

Posted on October 11, 2007

Comments

I hope the governor will do right and sign this.

If you were dying would you want to be alone with no one beside you that loved you???
To be totally alone and die is an unforgivable act bestowed on a human being.

These people are dying and need to be comforted by their loved ones. They are not a threat to our society when this type of statement is said by anyone it makes a complete fool out of the person stating it. These are human beings, not animals; their families have a right to say goodbye to their loved ones.

The aged need to be sent home to their families where they are cared for with love and respect. Where they will receive proper medical care, decent food, warm clothing and if needed the equipment for mobilization. We as humans have the right to die with dignity and for any government or group to take that right away is against what society has believed in.

I ask why is the government that is supposed to be of the people and for the people refusing to show sick and dying human beings compassion, kindness, and forgiveness. Are these politicians’ a reflection of the society we all live in? I sure hope not…..

Posted by: Gentle_Warrior at October 11, 2007 06:41 PM

Even if tough-on-crime (that has turned dumb-on-crime) politicians lacks the compassion to support AB 1539, the bill should be passed for practical, dollar-saving reasons.

Posted by: Barbara at October 11, 2007 08:14 PM

The bill has passed both houses of the legislature and now it's up to the Governor to sign it. The people are not going to go away and those who are being tired of being treated like slaves, bought and sold like cattle, are darned tired of it.

The intelligent one are organizing to be able to force these changes by initiative, lawsuits and at the ballot box. Be warned, the 3 million people connected to a state prisoner are not all dumb and frightened.

Posted by: Stephanie Gooding at October 12, 2007 05:45 AM

I am waiting for Governor Schwarzenegger to sign into law AB 1539. I wrote to Dr. Ayson at North Kern State prison and asked him if in his opinion my son would qualify under AB 1539 for release. I got a letter back from saying, we will take up this issue when the bill passes. He would not commit to a firm answer.

My fear is that the re-sentencing part of the bill will take forever while our loved ones sit in a concrete tomb (prison cell, alone) to their death. Why does the California Department of Corrections (CDCR) want to keep these helpless people until they have drawn their last breath?

You can bet I will keep my son on a breathing machine and everything else just to make the State of California pay for the torture they have put him through by not providing proper medical care, housing, food and water at times during the last 17 years of his confinment. All because of an accidental motorcycle wreck when he was sentenced to 20 to life.

Posted by: Nora Weber at October 12, 2007 07:42 PM

Send the dying inmates home. Let their families have some peace and have a chance to heal.

Posted by: Jill Buchanan at October 12, 2007 08:02 PM

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