Web Salon: The Future of Prisons

Greetings.

Prisons and the treatment of prisoners have dominated news reports in California over the last week.

However, the inmates and facilities in question are Iraqis detained halfway around the world.

Yet, California’s prisons are also in the midst of undergoing a monumental transformation in light of Governor Schwarzenegger’s stated commitment to changing the ethics and culture of our state’s prisons.

As last year’s unprecedented recall election demonstrates, the will of the public is capable of moving mountains. Yet it is unclear whether the public will back the new governor’s imminent proposals on prison reform.

As Governor Jerry Brown noted in this month’s California Journal :

“There will be change, but it will take quite awhile. It will take a lot of public awareness about the true state of affairs.”

My opening question is thus: Why should the public care about our state’s prisons?

Similarly, from your vantage point, what does the public need to know about the “true state of affairs”?

This is a good question and an important one to answer at the outset. The public should care about its prisons because so many of citizens are confined in them — in greater absolute numbers and higher rates of incarceration than at any other time in history.

Because of the sheer size of the incarcerated population, prison issues have become, in a significant way, very much part of the “public interest.” In addition, those unprecedented numbers of prisoners do not stay confined forever; over 90% will be released at some point back into free society.

What happens to them while they are confined, and how this affects who they are once released, affects all of us. It has an important impact on future crime rates, the quality of life in communities where large numbers of persons return after incarceration, and on the stability of poor and minority families who are disproportionately affected by cycles of incarceration.

The public needs to know that the experiment in which we have been engaged over the last 25 years — the incarceration of unprecedented numbers of people for unprecedented lengths of time — has come at enormous social and economic cost, with very debatable long-term benefits.

Our own prison system has been seriously overcrowded during this entire period of rapid increase in the rate of incarceration, despite many new prisons having been built. There has been a corresponding decline in the programming and treatment services afforded prisoners, many of whom have serious educational needs, lack marketable job skills, and suffer from sometimes severe psychological problems and conditions.

Overcrowded systems are difficult to manage, and the Department of Corrections often has resorted to the use of a range of punitive policies, including the use of long-term solitary confinement. The high rate of recidivism — nationally and statewide — suggests that the experiment has not been very successful.

Diverting at least a portion of the resources now used for incarceration and employing them instead to create programs of primary crime prevention, where we address the causes of crime, is something the public may now be ready to consider and debate.

Those are at least some of my initial thoughts as we begin this discussion.

Response from Richard Steffen, Staff Director, State Senate Select Committee on Government Oversight, chaired by State Senator Jackie Speier:

Every California should care about the state’s prison system if for no other reason than its cost.

The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has overspent its budget every year since 1997. This year it will need close to $500 million to close its current deficit. Correctional officers (prisons guards) are poised to receive $200 million in pay hikes this July.

By contrast the University of California and the California State University systems have accepted 7,000 freshman on the condition that these students attend two years of community college before transferring. This delayed admission will save our institutions of higher education some $46 million, but it will also clearly interrupt the quality of the educational experience derived from Senator Speier has argued that a portion of the officer pay raise, or other management cost-savings could be used to close the gap between 7,000 high school graduates and the opportunity for them to learn at a UC or CSU campus.
But cutting pay is a short-cut that will not solve long-term prison funding issues. The system is failing to correct behavior as evidenced by the fact that some 71 percent of parolees released from prison will be returned to prison within three years of release.
The correctional system has to provide educational and rehabilitative programs to those inmates most likely to benefit. People should care about cutting the recidivism rate because the failure to address the causes of rising recidivism will only lead to higher crime rates and higher prison costs.

The public should be made aware that the prison expenditure challenge cannot be addressed by simply cutting funds. Prisons have to be run on a 24/7 basis. There are some 162,000 inmates and another 113,000 parolees. California has the third largest prison system in the world, surpassed only by China and the rest of the United States.

We have to do a better job of managing California’s 32 adult prison. The solutions go well beyond simply providing inmates with more opportunities to learn and to kick drug habits. Prison gangs present management with difficult decisions. Overcrowded cells increase violent behavior. Correctional officers often earn more than the people who manage them.

The public must be made aware that solutions to stabilizing the costs of operating prisons will require an extensive amount of time and, most significantly, their support.

From a Department of Corrections perspective, the public should care about how prisons are run because they are operated at public expense.

The majority of inmates will parole to communities throughout California, and how parolees behave and integrate into these communities is a community concern. Parole is not just a CDC concern, but an issue for local law enforcement, community agencies, and fellow citizens to ensure parolees are successful.

A follow-up question, open to all:

All of you have cited, in some way, the problems posed by overcrowding and a lack of treatment or rehabilitation programs, both in terms of recidivism and the impact of parolees on communities already likely to be struggling with high crime rates.

But whereas Prof. Haney implicitly suggests changing sentencing standards to release prisoners and thus free up funds for crime prevention programs, I’m at a loss as to other suggestions for how the state could address overcrowding and the need for rehabilitation… if not through greater expenditures.

In other words, doesn’t it follow that improvements to the prison system must include building more facilities and hiring additional personnel to provide a setting that is driven less by “crisis management” but rather attends to the needs of inmates, from preventing rape to providing for drug treatment and education?

If so, and if the public is expected to contribute more funds to the system via taxes and fees, what precedent exists to suggest that voters will approve higher spending on the inmate population?

I agree that there is much consensus between us on the nature of the prison system’s problems-the “true state of affairs.” However, the LAST thing that needs to be done to address these problems is to expand the system.

The California prison system is not overcrowded because it is too small. Paradoxically, it became, and continues to be, overcrowded because it got too big, too fast. Too many people were drawn into a system that was unable to provide programs and services, resulting in large numbers of people returning to communities with none of their previous problems having been addressed. Many of them were in worse shape, not better, as a result of the experience.
We need to reduce the numbers of persons who go through this potentially damaging process and do a much better job addressing the needs of the persons who do require incarceration. But program-rich prisons can be cost effective if they are limited to people who absolutely need to be there. And they can reduce the need for the very expensive punitive approaches to prison crisis management (such as security housing units).

In addition, the overall costs of corrections can be reduced for taxpayers over the long run if we begin to invest in preventative community programs that deal more directly with the causes of crime. Enlightened politicians talk about “getting smart on crime” rather than just “getting tough.” I think this is what they mean. Public opinion surveys suggest that the public is less interested in punitive responses to crime control than they are in doing things that work.

This may be precisely the moment when a thoughtful set of well reasoned — “smart” — crime control proposals that reorders the priorities we have been pursuing can garner widespread public support.

The first steps in controlling prison spending should involve reducing the inmate population without putting public safety at risk. The Administration appears to be headed in the right direction by calling for parole reforms.

Secondly, our prison system is still in the dark ages — four prisons do not have e-mail capabilities, for example. Some wardens lack the business skills needed to achieve financial best practices. Each prison should be subject to a top to bottom audit. Corrections headquarters in Sacramento should increase its efforts to centralize buying of goods and services in order to get the best prices.

Finally, certain aspects of the contract between the state and the correctional officers [union] should be reworked to provide management with more tools to do a better job.

The above steps should be taken now before there is any talk of spending on more facilities.

Greetings all.

The prison system should definitely not be expanded. There is no sense in throwing good money after bad. The “true state of affairs” of California’s prison system is not simply that it is a poorly managed system that has failed to effectively reduce crime. The main problem is that California treats the prison system as the one-size-fits-all response to a myriad of social problems that the prison system has no ability to effectively resolve.

Young people today in California, especially youth of color and poor youth, grow up in neighborhoods with crumbling schools, paltry job opportunities, toxic pollutants, crime, and instability. Instead of prioritizing resolutions to these interconnected problems, California built up a punishment industry that locks up poor people and people of color for reacting to difficult environments in harmful ways. Once incarcerated, personal and familial instability increases, and the ability integrate into the mainstream economy after release becomes even more difficult. Public safety has little to do with this revolving door system.

Police and prisons have had a monopoly on the conversation about what to do about crime in California for far too long. Just look at the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA). This pro-prison lobby funded much of the campaign for Proposition 184, California’s Three Strikes ballot initiative, and has donated millions to legislators and past governors on both sides of the political spectrum.

The opportunity today is to use the California prison crisis to break that monopoly. Outside of the punishment paradigm, there are tangible solutions that address root issues of social inequity, poverty, and violence. What is more, solutions outside the prison system generally cost much less.

For example, California spends somewhere between 60 to 80,000 dollars per youth incarcerated in the California Youth Authority per year. Meanwhile, the cost of after school programs, intervention programs, mentoring programs, violence prevention programs, and job training programs operate at generally one tenth that cost. Even residential treatment programs, run by youth specialists instead of prison guards, rarely cost more than 40,000 per youth per year.

The question is not how to make the prison system more efficient. The real issue is how is California going to provide for all its residents needs such that the prison system becomes less and less relevant.

I’d like to focus our attention on two sticking points related to the reforms proposed both in this dialogue as well as by Jeanne Woodford, the recently appointed Director of the Department of Corrections.

First, and this will be obvious to all, the correctional system does not set or influence the sentencing laws cited by many as the main force behind the explosive growth in the California prison population as well as, perhaps, its inability to properly handle these inmates.

As this is an election year, it is worth noting that Bill Jones, a candidate for the U.S. Senate and the coauthor of the mandatory sentencing bill, is touting the success of this law.

This leads me to ask: Do you believe that California voters are indeed ready to look at the role and purpose of prisons in a new light — or, are you hopeful that they will be asked to do so by the governor and his staff? What evidence is there to support the claim that mandatory sentencing laws will be revised in the coming years?

Second, assuming that there is, indeed, a major shift underway in the popular understanding of prisons as one of several instruments in the fight against crime, what do you foresee, specifically, happening in the facilities built over the last 20 years?

For example, would you cite examples of facilities that have already successfully adopted some of the progressive approaches cited in this discussion — from an emphasis on rehabilitation to more cost-effective management?

[ed. note: There may be new evidence to support the claim that mandatory sentencing laws will be revised as early as November of this year. A June 10, 2004 report by the non-partisan Field Poll states that a November ballot measure to weaken the “three strikes” sentencing law is supported by 76 percent of California voters.]

Three Strikes is successful in terms of driving up prison costs. There are 3,451 third strikers in California prisons who committed a non-violent/non-serious felony to qualify them for a 25 year-to-life term. This group represents just under half of the Three Strikes population.

Over the next ten years it will cost well over $1 billion to house these non-violent/non-serious felons. Of course, they will be joined by others and together these inmates will present CDC with the added financial challenge of providing expensive health care for an aging population.

I don’t believe that at this time there are enough legislators who would support removing non-violent/non-serious felonies from Three Strikes and I don’t think the public support is there for such a removal. Public support for reforming Three Strikes must increase before legislators take on this politically charged issue.
At this point I believe the State Legislature should intensify its oversight of California’s Correctional System, and, a portion of this oversight should include educating the public on the true costs of operating prisons, especially health care costs and the basic wisdom of spending billions of taxpayer dollars on the long-term incarceration of those who commit property crimes.

This week I received a letter from a mother who complained her son, a Pelican Bay inmate, could not write her because the prison had no money for writing implements. Her complaint reminded me of the public school teacher last week who talked about having to bring pencils and toilet paper to school. The money isn’t there. Adjustments have to be made.

I think the only responsibility that lawmakers and corrections officials have to the public is to tell them the truth about the limited role that prisons can play in crime control and the real nature of the prison crisis the state currently faces.

In the past, they have acted as if they believe citizens “can’t handle the truth.” I think this is one reason we are in the crisis that we are. This appears to be a rare moment when the public is ready to consider cost-effective alternatives that de-emphasize incarceration and focus on addressing the causes of crime.

The recently enacted drug diversion law and mental health courts that send mentally ill offenders into treatment rather than prison are two example of how this is working. It remains to be seen whether infusions of treatment resources and programs into our prison system can be accomplished and whether the kind of important, community based programs that others have mentioned will be attempted. But it is a matter of political courage not knowledge.

For example, would you cite examples of facilities that have already successfully adopted some of the progressive approaches cited in this discussion

On the matter of identifying prison programs that produce positive results, I would note that SB 1468 by Senator Jackie Speier simply requires the state to form a working group that would publicly identify the best practices in state prisons, including programs that have proven effective in preparing inmates for release to a work-a-day world.

For example, inmates escaping prison gangs are housed at Mule Creek State Prison where they have formed a talking group bolster each other’s defiance of prison violence. Another example would be inmate firefighters who provide not only a valuable public service, but also earn a day of credit for each day on the fire line. The firefighters build self-esteem by doing a tough, dangerous job well. Some inmates function as EMTS — they respond quickly to auto accidents in rural areas, saving time and lives, as the nearest hospital crews are too far removed to provide timely responses.

These programs are all about finding self-worth, but, unfortunately, they are not well-funded and are somewhat secretive in their existence. SB 1468 would help, but the director of CDC doesn’t have to wait for such a bill to become law, if, in fact, it we are lucky enough to get this measure through in this tough budget year.

The objectives of SB 1468 could be put in action today. It is just a matter of leadership.

Mr. Steffen’s remarks are quite excellent, but just for a point of clarification: inmates on California’s fire lines earn two days credit for each day served. They are the only inmate group eligible for that time credit. That credit went into effect in January as part of an omnibus bill.

Additionally, the inmates are Mule Creek, San Quentin and Sierra Conservation Center are among numerous inmates statewide participating in the Purpose-Driven Life program.

[Editor’s note: The Contra Costa Times reports today, May 14, on the “Purpose-Drive Life” religious studies program and its “calming effect” in several California prisons. — Jose Marquez, California Connected]

I agree with Prof. Haney that this is about political courage. Given the plain facts of California’s budget-busting prison failure, few people would rationally choose to keep this up. Part of the road block here is the lack of voice people impacted by both street crime and mass incarceration have in state politics. Certainly the prison guards lobby has plenty of political influence and presence.

I think there is an untapped majority of Californians that can, and do, support sweeping criminal justice reforms.

For example, a New California Media poll released earlier this year found that most Californians, especially people of color and ethnic minorities, strongly prefer rehabilitation programs and alternative sentencing over prison terms and incarceration. This poll also found that Californians perceive of the state’s current criminal justice system as unfair, malfunctioning, and excessively harsh on juveniles. The issue is whether this untapped majority’s interests are being heard in Sacramento.

My expectation is that some changes are down the road for the state, but the kind of sweeping transformations needed are a long way off. Until a new majority has enough influence to persuade policy makers to make a change, California will remain a lock-em up state.

In the mean time, that task is both broad public education on different approaches to take and, more importantly, organizing among the disenfranchised majority that already have a view toward the need for real change.

Given that the juvenile end of the criminal justice system has had a more clear mandate to provide rehabilitation, its a good place to look for examples of what works.

In 1983, the state of Missouri decided to close its youth prison. In its place, the state developed a regional system of residential rehabilitation centers that are accessible and staffed by professional counselors and psychologists. Each person sent to one of these centers receives intensive one on one counseling and services. The results are noteworthy: over 70 percent of the youth released stay out for good.

When I had the opportunity to tour this system, I asked a lead staff person what difference age or severity of crime makes in how well people do in the programs. His answer: “It doesn’t make a difference really. I have seen younger kids that are harder to work with than older people and I have seen people in here for very serious charges that are completely amenable to treatment.”

Eric Schlosser, author of the best-selling “Fast Food Nation,” is currently writing a book on the U.S. prison system due to be released within a year. If his previous essay on the topic for The Atlantic Monthly (“ The Prison-Industrial Complex ”) is any indication of this forthcoming work, it will likely inspire many Americans to consider the issue of prison reform.

I mention this detail not to endorse or promote Mr. Schlosser but merely to point out that in the coming months and years, the public will be repeatedly asked — by its political leadership and the press — to take another look at our correctional system. At the same time, as many of you have pointed out in this discussion, the public will also need to examine sentencing laws and crime prevention, via after-school and drug-treatment programs.

However, since our discussion is limited to prisons — and not crime prevention, per sé — my final question for you is as follows:
When Californians think of a “prison” and/or a “prisoner” — what would you like them to see?

The public should always see reality. One day I would like them to see a three-tiered prison system: one tier that provides rehabilitative and educational services to inmates who want to succeed after failing; a second tier that is a hybrid mental hospital, providing medical treatment to those with certain disorders; and a third tier for the most difficult inmates.

This third tier, now known as the SHU (Special Housing Unit), needs to shed itself of medieval punishments such as sunlight depravation and little or no opportunity for mobility. This would be a correctional system of compassion, but still a system that separates wrong doers from a law abiding society.

I would hope this would be a system where correctional officers would take responsibility for seeing that inmates who care to heal themselves, can heal themselves. And, in turn, these officers would be compensated for their ability to do more than just stand guard.

If the above were reality, then the public, I believe, would understand the investment required in a truly correctional system.

I also understand that currently in California prisons the norteños are sworn to attack the EMEs (Mexican Mafia) when and where they can, and the EMEs, in turn, will always return the favor. Will a chalkboard and some books break the violence between these two prison gangs? Are gang peace treaties possible? The road ahead is not paved with easy answers.

The CDC needs to continue to expose the public to the reality of how difficult it can be to confine 162,000 adults. A better public understanding of prison issues will help to expose that which is unjustified and that which requires a greater public will to overcome.

I think Richard Steffen has proposed an insightful and humane model for a prison system of the future — one where prisoners are given meaningful programming, where their mental health and other needs are adequately addressed, and where public safety is maintained through conditions of confinement that are never, even in the highest security levels, abusive and, as he put it, medieval in nature. I think we are in agreement that such a compassionate system does not exist, but is a worthy goal toward which to work.

The only thing I would add to his vision of the prison system of the future is this: it has to be a much smaller system than the one we currently operate. There are far, far too many of our citizens in prison, more (by far) than at any time in our history, more than any other nation on earth, and more than is sensible or humane. So, when future Californians think of “the prison,” I hope that they will think of something we truly turn to as a genuine last resort to crime, and understand that, no matter how many of them we have, prisons have only a limited role in reducing the overall amount of crime in our society.

The kinds of diversion programs we have been talking about — designed to redirect large groups of people out of the prison system and into programs better designed to meet their needs and address their problems — and the kind of community-oriented proposals that Lenore Anderson made in one of her earlier responses — addressing social inequities, crumbling schools, few job opportunities, an abusive CYA system that prepares wards for prison and little else, and the like that affect precisely the minority and poor young people who eventually end up in CDC — are even more important components in the fight against crime.

We can talk about prisons, per se, for purposes of discussion, but we cannot forget that they are, or should be seen as, only a small part of these larger set of solutions. Finally, I think one key to the change in perspective we have been talking about is implied in the last part of Jose’s question — what should Californians envision when they think of “a prisoner?”

Prisoners have been demonized over the last several decades, sometimes by the media (who attract much more attention with sensationalized than accurate stories) and sometimes by politicians (who often get more votes through fear than rationality). I think one important step in the process of creating a compassionate prison system and a system of crime control that is based on addressing community needs as much or more than punishing wrongdoers is to debunk the myths that surround who prisoners are.

In some communities, a third or more of young men are either in prison or jail, or on parole or probation. Many more have been there or will soon go. In many instances, they are people who were treated badly by our economic, educational, and juvenile justice systems, who faced enormous obstacles in their lives, had many bad breaks, and no doubt made some questionable choices. But many of them need help, not scorn. They are not the paradigmatic “other,” or the diabolical monsters whose images were used to fuel to tough on crime movement. Increasingly, with so many people in prison, or on their way in, or just coming out, “they” are “us,” figuratively and literally.

Prof. Haney sums it up well. As Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, has said, every human is worth more than the sum of his or hers worst acts.

I want Californians to think of a prisoner as someone’s son, daughter, mother, brother, sister, cousin, uncle, or dad. When thinking about what to do with people who have broken the law, I want Californians to think: “What would I do if that was my child (or parent or spouse) involved in that incident? What would I do if that person was a part of my life?”

In moving forward, accountability and transparency are two principles that I think should guide the reformation of any correctional system. It is impossible to have faith in a system in which corruption and abuse reign unchecked behind a code of silence.

As well, in moving away from reliance on prisons, funding and support for community-based programs needs to be dramatically bolstered. Many of the organizations that are providing successful gang intervention, domestic/family violence intervention, mental health services, etc. are operating on a dime.

These organizations, many of which are run by the communities they serve, need help keeping their doors open and expanding. And this kind of funding can’t be limited to times of economic prosperity, it should be viewed as central to the priorities of the state, a staple part of the budget.