Archives for October 2014

“Criminal justice policies that rely on building and operating more prisons to address community safety concerns are not sustainable” and they will not result in improved public safety, reports the California Little Hoover Commission.
In its February finding, commission Chair Jonathan Shapiro called California’s correctional system “a slow-motion disaster.”
The commission is a bipartisan and independent state oversight agency.
The commission operates in the interest of taxpayers. It holds public hearings, consults with experts and visits government operations in action in order to help government agencies perform better. Its conclusions are given to the governor and Legislature for consideration.
Seven years ago, the commission issued “an unusually blistering report warning that time was running out for California policymakers to resolve the state’s corrections crisis.” (Solving California’s Corrections Crisis: Time is Running Out)
The commission urged policymakers to amend the Penal Code to reflect that the purpose of incarceration cannot just be punishment, but also to reduce recidivism and successful community reintegration. “Rehabilitative programs and reducing crime are not mutually exclusive,” the commission said.
“District attorneys who collectively have opposed even the slightest changes to sentencing laws are going to have to compromise,” the commission report said. Bringing prison population to levels that do not violate the ban against cruel and unusual punishment “cannot be achieved without eliminating the state’s chronic imbalance between what its sentencing laws require and the resources available to incarcerate offenders.”
“Scientific research in the past 40 years has led to significant progress in many areas in California,” the commission noted. “When it comes to criminal justice sentencing, however, California has ignored the science.”
The commission cited the national trend in attitude toward incarceration policies, noting that taxpayers “do not want to pay for failed policies that cycle offenders in and out of prison or incarcerate the mentally ill and the addicted for lengthy sentences without access to quality treatment.”
The commission recognized that Realignment demonstrated that “California is serious about addressing its prison overcrowding problem.” However, “Realignment alone will not be enough to bring the department into compliance with the Supreme Court order,” according to an April 2012 report issued by CDCR.
The commission cited plans to build new prison beds:
Over the past several years, the state has allocated $1.7 billion to expand local correctional facilities. The state has awarded $1.2 billion to 21 counties for an expected expansion of 9,000 jail beds. The Board of State and Community Corrections plans to award another $500 million to 15 counties for additional local capacity in 2014.
In September 2013, policymakers enacted SB 105, which authorized $315 million in the 2014-15 budget and $1 billion in additional funding over three years for the state to lease additional prison cells, either county jail space or private correctional facilities both in and outside of California.
In the governor’s 2014-15 budget proposal, Brown proposed an additional $500 million for more expansion and improvements to local facilities for program space.

By the Numbers:

The state previously had built 12 prisons over the course of 132 years. During the 20-year building campaign between 1984 and 2005, California policymakers enacted hundreds of laws increasing sentence length, adding sentence enhancements and creating new sentencing laws. The result was that every new prison the state built filled to capacity quickly.
With the exception of the recently completed California Health Care Facility and the planned infill housing previously described, California ended its prison-building boom with the opening of Kern Valley State Prison in 2005. This was after adding 21 new facilities between 1984 and 2005.
Prior to the February 2014 court order, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation projected that the prison population would slowly continue to climb to approximately 136,600 by June 2014 and more than 142,000 by 2019 barring any additional changes, moving the state away from the 137.5 percent of capacity required by the courts.
In its Fall 2013 Adult Population Projections report, CDCR reported a spike in new admissions of offenders with a second strike in 2012-13, an increase of 32.6 percent over the previous fiscal year.
Approximately 20 percent, some 25,000 offenders, are serving term-to-life sentences, for example, 15-years-to-life in prison.
Of these, approximately 10,000 “lifers” have passed their minimum term. Nearly a third of the offenders serving life terms with the possibility of parole, which is more than 8,000 offenders, are 50 years old or older. Almost half of the offenders serving 25 years to life as a result of a third strike, nearly 4,200 offenders, also are older than 50.
CDCR data show that less than 5 percent of lifers released from prison are returned to prison for a new crime, compared to 51 percent of the rest of the prison population released from prison.

This November, California voters will decide whether to reclassify seven types of nonviolent drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.
Proposition 47 would generally allow people in jail and prison to appear before a judge and have their sentences reflect the lower terms.
The measure would also create a fund for programs intended to reduce crime and support crime victims, according to California Budget Project.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates net savings to the overall criminal justice system, both state and local, in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
“If Proposition 47 passes, California will be the first state in the nation to end felony sentencing for drug possession and petty theft crimes,” reports Californians for Safe Neighborhoods & Schools. “The initiative will permanently reduce incarceration and shift one billion dollars over the next five years alone from state corrections to K-12 school programs and mental health and drug treatment.”
In a recent San Francisco Chronicle opinion column, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said, “Our over-incarceration problem cannot be solved until we address our penal code, which is outdated with excessive punishments, especially for drug offenses. But drug use is going up. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found in 2012 that since 2012, illicit drug use increased by 8 percent and 20 million Americans who needed substance abuse treatment did not receive it. We’ve failed.”
Gascón added, “Proposition 47 can reverse these trends by prioritizing prison space for those convicted of violent, serious crimes and investing the savings in mental health treatment, schools and victims — smart strategies to improve public safety. Fear mongering won’t work; the public knows it’s time to rethink our safety priorities. Proposition 47 will help us do that.”
California Budget Project reports, “Opponents of Proposition 47, including the California District Attorneys Association and Crime Victims United, argue that ‘California has plenty of laws and programs that allow judges and prosecutors to keep first-time, low-level offenders out of jail if it is appropriate. Proposition 47 would strip judges and prosecutors of that discretion.’ Proposition 47, they argue, ‘will overcrowd jails with dangerous felons who should be in state prison and jam California’s courts with hearings to provide Get Out of Prison Free cards.’”
The measure increases the threshold dollar amount for a crime that could be considered a felony to $950 for the following crimes: Check fraud, Forgery, Shoplifting, Petty theft, Petty theft with a prior, Receiving stolen property.
In addition, the measure reclassifies most unlawful drug possession as a misdemeanor.
When a defendant appears before a judge for resentencing, the judge will deny relief if he determines that there is an “unreasonable risk” the person will commit one of several violent felonies.
State parole officers would supervise released offenders unless the court chooses to waive the parole requirement.
Excluded from relief are defendants with “a prior conviction for a serious and/or violent offense, as specified by the measure, or for any registerable sex offense.”
Proposition 47 requires any state savings to be deposited into a special fund beginning in August 2016 exclusively for three purposes:
Sixty-five percent for mental health treatment, drug treatment and diversion programs in order to reduce crime.
Twenty-five percent for programs designed to improve outcomes for K-12 public school students by reducing truancy and supporting students who are at risk of dropping out or are victims of crime.
Ten percent for trauma recovery centers to provide services to victims of crime.
 

California has seen drastic drops in the rates of youth and adult incarceration in the past decades, accompanied by declines in the youth and adult crime rates, says Mike Males of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
The state’s rate of youth incarceration has dropped 60 percent compared to that in 1996, and its rate of adult incarceration is 24 percent compared to 1999, according to Males.
“California has all but abolished state imprisonment and has sharply reduced local incarceration of youths to the lowest levels ever recorded – by far,” Males said in a March report.
Males reported that there was “a 60 percent drop in the rate of youth incarceration in 17 years, along with a huge shift toward local and shorter terms” and that the current rate “probably (stood) at an all-time low.”
In 1996, 20,793 California youths were locked up – 10,115 in state-run youth facilities and 10,678 in local juvenile halls and camps – in a total youth population (ages 10 to 17) of 3.7 million, he said.
As of Dec. 31, 2013, California held only 9,336 youths behind bars – just 683 in state-run youth facilities and 8,653 in local juvenile halls and camps. This is in spite of the fact that the teenaged youth population has grown to 4.1 million since 1996, he added.
Males also reported “an unprecedented reduction in adult incarceration” in the state – adult prisoners decreased by 30,000 since 1999.
About 240,000 adults were held in California state prisons and local jails on an average day in 1999 in an adult population (ages 18 to 69) of 21.7 million, according to Males. In 2013, only 217,000 were incarcerated in an adult population of 25.8 million. “That’s a decline in the adult incarceration rate of 24 percent in 14 years, back to the level of 1993,” he said.
Such decline in incarcerations “was largely forced on the state by court mandates and budget constraints,” Males concluded. Yet California’s youth crime rate plummeted to its lowest level since 1957, and adult violent crime declined since 1999 through the first half of 2013, he said.
“While large-scale de-incarceration of youth and low-level adult offenders in favor of alternative strategies may contribute to long-term benefits, the size of California’s crime decrease, especially among youth, suggests much larger forces are at work.” He commented that “locking up lots of younger and lesser offenders is not vital to public safety today and opens up discussion beyond the simplistic debates of the past surrounding get-tough measures and sentencing reform.”