Need to Trim Corrections Spending, Governor? Stop Wasting Money on the Death Penalty!
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By Natasha Minsker
ACLU of Northern California
If Gov. Schwarzenegger thinks he can cut $3.5 billion from state spending on corrections, he is being unrealistic and impractical.
In his state of the state address Wednesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger promised to restore the California dream by increasing funds for education and cutting funds for prisons in the budget proposal he releases today. That’s a great theory. But his only real proposal is to outsource prison administration to private companies. The state’s powerful prison guards’ union will ensure that plan fails. Meanwhile, the governor continues to slash education, health care, and other vital services.
So let’s consider something the governor can actually do right now to make a serious dent in the corrections budget: convert all 700 death sentences in California to permanent imprisonment saving the state $1 billion over the next five years.
A slew of articles have recently documented the decline of the death penalty nationally. Death sentencing hit an all time low in 2009. As reported this week on National Public Radio, the United States had only 106 death sentences last year. Texas, a capital punishment stronghold, only sent nine people to death row.
There are many reasons for the decline, chief among them the public’s growing concern over wrongful convictions and the fact that people have come to understand that permanent imprisonment—also called life without the possibility of parole—really, truly means that a person will be condemned to spend the rest of his or her life behind bars and will die in prison.
And then there’s the cost: around the country, prosecutors, legislators and voters are realizing that the death penalty is simply a costly and wasteful government program that we can’t afford.
It’s not just the practice of the death penalty that is being undermined; it’s the theory as well. As the New York Times reported this week, the American Law Institute-- the brain-trust of the legal community-- withdrew its support for the death penalty, finding, among other things, that it “is plagued by racial disparities; is enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers are underpaid and some are incompetent; risks executing innocent people; and is undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.”
But California, oddly enough, has become a rogue state when it comes to death sentencing.
Our great state accounted for 29 of those 106 death sentences in 2009, or 27 percent (more than double California’s share of the total U.S. population). As of December 17, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported 697 people on death row. Judges sentenced two more people to death in December and one this week, bringing the grand total to 700, by far the most populous death row in the country and most of the world.
At the same time, the state has only executed 13 people since 1967. It takes more than 25 years for a case to move through all of the mandatory appeals. All executions have been on hold for four years as a result of legal challenges. We don’t have enough lawyers and judges to handle 700 death sentences, half of the people on death row don’t have an attorney, and the Supreme Court already spends almost one-third of its time on death penalty cases.
The system is simply overwhelmed, overburdened and overdue for change. California’s death penalty process is broken, and Gov. Schwarzenegger is allowing this ghastly and costly disaster unfold.
Meanwhile, the state is spending hundreds of millions of precious dollars trying to prop the failed system up. Housing for just one person on death row costs $90,000 more per year than housing in the general prison population (itself a hefty $50,000 a year). That means we are now paying an extra $63 million a year for death row housing. If the governor acted right now to convert all death sentences to permanent imprisonment, he could cut that much from the corrections’ budget today. Plus, we wouldn’t have to spend $400 million to build a new, expanded death row. And we would save millions more in legal fees.
The governor is right: we need to spend more money on education and less on prisons to bring back the safe, healthy and sustainable California we all dream of. One necessary step to achieving that dream: get rid of the expensive death penalty.
Natasha Minsker is the Death Penalty Policy Director for the ACLU of Northern California.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Natasha Minsker is death penalty policy director of the ACLU of Northern California. The People’s Budget Fix coalition includes the ACLU of Northern California, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Drug Policy Alliance, and Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes.
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So let’s consider something the governor can actually do right now to make a serious dent in the corrections budget: convert all 700 death sentences in California to permanent imprisonment saving the state $1 billion over the next five years.
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And then there’s the cost: around the country, prosecutors, legislators and voters are realizing that the death penalty is simply a costly and wasteful government program that we can’t afford.
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As the New York Times reported this week, the American Law Institute-- the brain-trust of the legal community-- withdrew its support for the death penalty, finding, among other things, that it “is plagued by racial disparities.
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Wow, Natasha. Thank you for providing such a clear and insightful article into why the death penalty should be not only opposed, but also abolished. Thank you for going past the moral dilemmas of the death penalty to provide tangible, concrete reasons why we should kill our state's homicide machine. If we cannot defend the innocent, we cannot defend the death penalty.
I believe that justice system should properly administer but it doesn’t mean that the government should spend a big portion on this. There are still some projects that need to allocate a bigger budget such as the economic recovery programs. Did you know that Glee show grew to become a great sensation, and not only is it building a great following, who now won't have to try and bribe FOX studio execs with payday loans to keep it on the air, but it’s beginning to post numbers that compete with other FOX heavyweights like American Idol and House MD. Fans of the show Glee will no doubt be filled with glee (cheap pun) that the show has been green lighted for a second season.
Abolishing the death penalty will save some money, yet you have missed an important savings in corrections that should never be forgotten. California’s Three Strikes Law convictions accounts for 25% of the prison population serving double time or 25 to life sentences. Amending Three Strikes so that the second or third strike must be a serious or violent crime would save billions in the corrections budget. Today as it stands any person that has one strike and commits any felony even misdemeanors enhanced to a felony will receive double the sentence. Any person with two strikes (two strikes can come out of one case) that commits any felony will receive 25 years to life. No other state in the nation has a Three Strikes Law such as California’s and it is so flawed that no other state has even considered California’s version. The Prison guards union paid for and produced the ads to sell Three Strikes to the voters. Amending Three Strikes should be priority for everyone concerned with the prison budget!
If you want to deal with overcrowding in the state prison system, you obviously need to focus on technical parole violators not three strikes. The three strikes law is just the current version of habitual criminal law, a feature that has always been available in California law and probably every other state in the country. The direct impact on the State Prison population does not appear all that substantial. Three strike inmates make up about 5% of the 160,000 State inmate population and 1% of the 86,000 county jail population.
The actual correctional bed shortage is the 65,000 county jail bed shortage reported by the California Sheriffs Association, not in prisons which have a shortage of about 3,500 beds. The county jail shortage caused the transfer of about half of the usual county jail population to prison, causing minor overcrowding. Technical parole violators occupy about 25,000 expensive prison beds. Fix the broken technical parole revocation system and prisons would have a surplus of over 15,000 beds.
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