Prison University - Enrolling California Students Now

It is not surprising that 70% or more former felons fail to reintegrate back into society following their release. Without resources to overcome their addictions, (an estimated 80% have substance abuse problems) improve their education (78% are functionally illiterate) or receive real-life job training skills that can be put to use when they are released, they are doomed to fail.

Additionally, parole requirements are extremely difficult to follow when housing, jobs and transportation are almost impossible to achieve. Failure to meet these requirements almost always ends in a violation of parole and a swift return to prison. Almost two thirds of the people sent toprison in California last year were parole violators, a good portion being "technical" violations - NOT new crimes.

Thanks in part to the massive prison machine, educating and maintaining the health of our children is no longer the first priority of this nation. Rather, the penal system is swiftly becoming our largest "industry" and expenditure.

One of the only areas of steady growth in this country and especially in California, is in the field of corrections. The lure of big money is corrupting our criminal justice system, replacing notions of public service with a drive for higher profits--a trend increased by the growth of privately-owned, profit-making prisons. The eagerness of elected officials to pass "tough-on-crime" legislation combined with their unwillingness to disclose the true costs of these laws has encouraged all sorts of financial improprieties.

With ever-changing laws passed by voter initiatives and legislative bills, our policymakers have successfully played upon our fear of crime and used these platforms to win votes. The result has been that prison complexes are now the cornerstones of economic development. Between political platforms, law enforcement unions and large corporations that are profiting off of human misery, we have become a nation hell-bent on mass incarceration.

California faces a budget deficit of well over 15 billion dollars. Our annual correctional system cost to this state was 8.795 billion dollars in 2007 and we are looking at an additional 7 billion dollars to "fix" the crisis that overcrowding our prisons has created. Rather interesting that our projected budget shortfall is virtually the same as the projected cost of our prison system.

Billions could be saved by changes to our correctional complexes, however again these changes are being deliberately suppressed by house Republicans. The fear of being labeled “soft on crime” by other campaigning politicians is greater than their need to serve the public. There is also the motivation of greed. Money lining the coffers of private corporations, correctional and law enforcement unions and their employees, who in turn support the politicians that secure their piece of the pie.

Until recently, the general public has paid little attention to how much this broken judicial
and prison system is costing us. The mentality hammered into us by our elected officials has been to "lock 'em up, and throw away the key". Finally the lights are coming on and people are beginning to see the truth about what our penal system has become: a revolving door for poor, highly dysfunctional and often illiterate drug abusers.

What’s wrong with this picture? How did we evolve into a society so bent on incarceration that the criminal justice system has become one of this nations largest employers?

In just a single California study completed by a panel of 17 national experts, it was found that new programs and policies for inmates and parolees could eliminate the need for as many as 48,000 prison beds. According to the same study, "Half of all prisoners being released in 2006 sat idle during their entire prison stay, without participating in a single rehabilitation program". (Joan Petersilia, criminology professor at the University of California, Irvine).

California’s experiment in wholesale incarceration is one of the greatest policy failures of our times. According to California's governmental oversight panel: "sentencing reform" and the "reinvention of parole" are the best long-term solutions for California’s prison capacity problems. The issues are well known and need no further study, said the panel, calling for immediate, broad-based actions from the governor and the legislature.

Common sense dictates that if California put more money into rehabilitative efforts, our prisons would not be so overcrowded and the savings generated could then be directed back to the education of our children and other social programs. As it is, the less education, the higher the rates of incarceration. Taking money from education to build more prisons only serves to perpetuate this vicious cycle of the revolving prison door.

America is quickly losing its credibility and identity in the world. We are no longer the "Land of the Free", we are the "Land of the Incarcerated". We cannot afford to ignore our societal problems any longer. Far too many children are dropping out of school and off the grid, only to reappear a short time later in our justice and penal systems.

The irresponsibility of our "Republican" legislators knows no boundaries. Even in times of huge deficits some are once again promoting the same type of failed policies through the initiative process. They are once again using the same fear tactics and rhetoric on the public to pass more misguided, dangerous and wasteful legislation. They are using the initiative process and voters because voters can be manipulated.

Currently we have the inaptly named "Victims Rights Initiative", also known as Marsy’s Law appearing on the November ballot whom Assemblymen Todd Spitzer is promoting and The Safe Neighborhoods Act promoted by Senator George Runner and his wife, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner. Both of these initiatives will cost billions of tax dollars and produce the same results: more overcrowded prison conditions and no effort to fix the broken system that already exists.

Instead, these initiatives would further drive California's budget deeper into the red. Both have been highly funded by Henry T. Nicholas III, a billionaire who donated millions to these initiatives, as well as past ones that have rewritten California's criminal and justice laws and have had serious impact and perpetuated more overcrowding. Now Nicholas himself has been federally charged in an 18 page, 21 count indictment for supplying prostitutes to big-ticket customers, drug use and trafficking, conspiracy, security fraud and making death threats.

That this tainted money would be used to further propel California into the poor house has led some Democrats to demand that their campaigns return these funds. "Anything less than that is pure hypocrisy that voters will see through," said Sen. Gloria Romero.

Expressing her disgust that Nicholas has used his billions to lobby for so many criminal justice laws, she was also quoted as saying, "Let's be sure that the people who stand up and say, 'Let's be tough on crime' are not themselves the people who imperil us and make us unsafe in our own neighborhoods".

Then we have the recently released "Machado Package", prepared by the Senate Budget Committee and presented by Sen. Mike Machado. This proposal offers the state a way to save money (about $500 million dollars in the prison budget for 2008-2009) and would also advance positive changes in the prison system by reversing the trend of the ever increasing prison budget growth. The governor has neither endorsed nor opposed this package. Not surprisingly, Republicans on the budget committee voted against it, proving once again that their political aspirations far outweigh common sense.

Californians must stop listening to the rhetoric of constantly campaigning politicians. We can protect ourselves by EDUCATING OURSELVES! Arming ourselves with knowledge before we vote gives us a better chance to make intelligent decisions at the polls.

It's time to embrace the true and unblemished facts - the studies have long been in, the road map to successful corrections has been laid before us. The only way to repair our broken prison system is to initiate more educational and rehabilitative programs and provide real-life job training skills in our prisons along with sentencing and parole policy reformation.

Implement these changes and we will achieve lower incarceration and recidivism rates, saving billions of tax dollars along the way, as well as an innumerable amount of lives. This country, this state, and the future of our children depend on it.

Unless, of course, you want your child enrolled in the Prison University System? If our elected officials continue to refuse to implement the recommended changes, the “Prison University” may be the only publicly funded higher education left in this state.

The following are links to just a few of the vast number of reports and studies done on prison issues in the last 20 plus years:

Pew Center on the States
Report: One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008
Your State Prison Costs

Little Hoover Commission
Solving California's Correctional Crisis

Vera Institute of Justice:
Confinement Report
Reconsidering Incarceration: New Directions for Reducing Crime

Urban Institute:
Crime Policy Report

Human Rights Watch
Prison Conditions, various reports

ICPSR: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data

CDCR: Expert Panel on Adult Offender and Recidivism Reduction Programming
Report to the California State Legislature

Justice Center, Council of State Governments

Report of the Re-Entry Policy Council

Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics

National Institute of Corrections
Transition from Prison to Community Initiative (TPCI)

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Recidivism Reduction Program Inventory

Forbes
U.S. Prison Policy Needs Reform

CURE
Correction Education: Reducing Recidivism