A Bit of Good News: Inmate Reductions Do Not Increase Crime

Yesterday’s Chron reported on a new Sentencing Project report, examining crime rates in California, New York, and New Jersey. Here are the bits about CA:

From 2006 to 2012, the new report said, California reduced its prison population by 23 percent, from nearly 174,000 to 134,000, while the nationwide inmate count dropped by just 1 percent.

The decline accelerated in October 2011 under a state law implementing Gov. Jerry Brown’s “realignment” program, which sentenced lower-level nonviolent felons to county jail instead of state prison and increased the number of convicts who spent part of their sentences on probation.

The state says it will also comply with court orders stepping up parole of elderly, disabled and low-risk prisoners. A 2012 ballot measure sparing some nonviolent felons from life terms under California’s three-strikes law is further reducing the imprisonment rate.

During the same six-year period, the report said, the rate of violent crime – murder, forcible rape, robbery and assault – fell 21 percent in California, compared with 19 percent nationwide.

. . . 

Despite the improvements, the study said, California’s violent crime rate remains above the national average. The state’s property crime rate is slightly below the national average, although the rate of decline from 2006 to 2012 was 13 percent in the state and 15 percent nationwide, the study said.

Another finding was that auto thefts in California have increased since realignment took effect in 2011, bringing the rates for that crime back up to 2009 levels. Overall, however, the study said the prisons-to-jails program does not appear to have increased serious crime in the state.

The original report can be found here.

CCA Signs Lease of California City Prison

The prison in California City.
Photo courtesy the Tehachapi News.

Your $315 million, gentle readers, are hard at work. The Tehachapi News reports:

Plans to ameliorate the state’s prison overcrowding moved forward Oct. 15 when Corrections Corporation of America announced it struck a deal with California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to lease out its correctional center in California City to house state inmates.

The state will lease CCCC for a three-year term, with unlimited two-year renewal options, at a rate of $28.5 million annually, according to CCA’s press release.

The alliance was originally outlined in Senate Bill 105, which was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown Sept. 12, and which allocates $315 million for the “prison fix” through June 30, 2014.

Of the allocation, CDCR will spend $28.5 million per year on leasing the facility and another $93.5 million on operating costs, said CDCR spokeswoman Dana Simas. The sum amounts to nearly 40 percent of the $315 million budget.

“It is a good chunk,” Simas said of the spending.

She contrasted the operating cost with that of a similar state-run facility, which would be $108 million per year.

As an interesting twist, CCA employees who want to be guards are now testing to be peace officers (and, obviously, join the CCPOA.)

But wait! There’s more!

With the Jan. 27, 2014, deadline looming for reducing state-wide inmate populations to 137.5 percent of capacity, CDCR is in a crunch to relocate about 9,600 inmates. Simas said once the inmates are moved to CCCC, the state will still need to transfer about 4,000 more to meet the court-ordered capacity cap.

The state expects to transfer 2,381 low to medium Level 2 adult male inmates who are currently in California state prisons to CCCC. Per the prison’s website, the facility is of medium/maximum security caliber and has 2,304 beds. Simas said the state plans to double-cell the inmates, which CCA was not previously doing with its federal inmates.

As an aside: I don’t usually read the Tehachapi News, but maybe I should. Great piece of reporting by Emily Brunett. All the information you need, none of the information you don’t need, all the numbers check out, and all angles objectively covered.

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Props to Josh Page for the link.

Jerry, What on Earth Are You Thinking?

Photo courtesy Rich Pedroncelli for
the San Francisco Chronicle.

The new gubernatorial plan to solve the prison crisis Jerry Brown says we don’t have has just been announced: Spending $315 million on private prisons.

No, I am not making this up. The Chron reports:

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday responded to a federal court order to significantly reduce California’s prison population by proposing a $315 million plan to send thousands of inmates to private prisons and vacant county jail cells, hoping to avoid what he said would be a mass release of dangerous felons.

The cost could reach $700 million over two years, with much of the money likely to come from a $1.1 billion reserve fund in the state budget.

During a news conference at the Capitol, Brown bristled at the court’s suggestion that the state could continue its early release of certain inmates to meet the federal judges’ population cap. He noted that California has already reduced the prison population by some 46,000 inmates to comply with the court’s orders and said only the most dangerous convicts remain in state prison.

The judges have ordered the state to release an additional 9,600 inmates by the end of the year.

Brown, however, said sending them to available cells in privately run prisons within California and in other states, as well as to empty jail cells, is the best way to meet the court’s mandate without endangering public safety.

“Public safety is the priority, and we’ll take care of it,” the governor said. “The money is there.”

Governor Brown, what on Earth were you thinking when you concocted this wasteful, ridiculous, idiotic plan? What do you mean, “the money is there”? California is in a state of fiscal disaster, and suddenly we have $315 million to invest in private prisons? And where was all this mysterious money when federal courts asked you why we pack people up like sardines and let them languish in their own feces without appropriate health care? Moreover, how will this lucrative investment manifest itself? Will Correctional Corporation of America and Geo build prisons on Californian soil? Or will we send more inmates than the 9,000 we currently have out of state to Arizona and Tennessee? How are you squaring this off with your traditional allies at the CCPOA? Are you going to put state guards in private prisons to make sure their interests are served, as well? After all the effort we put into realignment–and after countless experts have made reasonable suggestions to keep jail population law by not locking up people who should not be locked up in the first place–this is what it’s coming to? After expert witnesses agreed that decrowding prisons is not a danger to public safety, where does your information to the contrary come from? Can you find a decent, respectable criminal justice scholar in the entire state of California that thinks this is necessary? Are you trying to divert our attention from the fact that this is Day 51 of a hunger strike against the horrific conditions under which you hold inmates in solitary confinement? What the hell is going on?

CCC Field Trip: Wrongful Convictions in Ecuador (and, SCOTUS tells Jerry off)

By now, many readers have already heard the news: Gov. Brown’s plea to modify the release plan and avoid releasing 10,000 inmates per the Plata mandate has failed in the Supreme Court. Justice Kennedy authored the decision.  Law enforcement is already grumbling.

I’m on Quito, Ecuador, on vacation and don’t want to get aggravated, so if you like, go read Scalia’s dissenting opinion for yourselves.

 Quito is a beautiful high-altitude city in the shadow of Mount Pichincha, with amazing art, colonial architecture, and marvelous parks. And, of course, as one does, the first thing I did this morning was read the local paper, El Comercio, which featured this amazing story about a wrongfully convicted man and his post-exoneration life.

Here’s the bit that caught my eye:

Según datos de la Defensoría Pública, el 65% de personas apresadas recuperó su libertad porque no se hallaron pruebas en su contra. Estos datos fueron levantados desde el 2007 hasta el 2010.

(According to data from the Public Defender, 65% of arrested people were freed because there was no proof against them. These data was collected between 2007 and 2010. My translation–H.A.)

In fact, the article notes that wrongful convictions are so common that the Public Defender’s office has a psychological department dedicated to help exonerated people deal with the stigma and reclaim their lives.

Expect more reports on the Ecuadorian justice system.

Hunger Strike Bears Fruit at Martinez Detention Facility

On July 19, 2013, all Martinez Detention Facility hunger strikers suspended their hunger strike. (Prisoners there had joined the statewide California hunger strike when it began on July 8, after submitting their own demands to the warden.) The SF Bay View reports about the demands that have been met, which were detailed explanations about reasons for administrative segregation, the ability to empty one’s trash once a day, more privacy scheduling medical appointments (rather than announcing them on the intercom), separating mentally ill inmates from the general population, and allowing ink pen fillers to be purchased from the canteen.

Congratulations to the strikers on the successful conclusion of their courageous struggle, and best wishes to those who are still on hunger strike.

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Props to Caitlin Henry for the link. 

Three-Judge-Panel: State Must Comply with Population Reduction Order; Jerry Threatened with Contempt

Image from CDCR’s three-judge-panel page.

A decision came out yesterday from the three-judge-panel that issued the original Plata v. Schwarzenegger decision: The state must comply with the original order. Moreover, should it not do so, it will be held in contempt. The L.A. Times reports:

In a blistering 71-page ruling, the jurists rejected Brown’s bid to end restrictions they imposed on crowding in the lockups. The state cannot maintain inmate numbers that violate orders intended to eliminate dangerous conditions behind bars, they said.

Brown and other officials “will not be allowed to continue to violate the requirements of the Constitution of the United States,” the judges wrote.

“At no point over the past several months have defendants indicated any willingness to comply, or made any attempt to comply, with the orders of this court,” they said. “In fact, they have blatantly defied them.”

The judges gave the state 21 days to submit a plan for meeting the population target by the end of the year. Administration officials said they would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The piece pretty much speaks for itself, but I do want to say something about this to readers wondering why the state hasn’t been held in contempt so far, which is a question I get asked a lot when I talk about this. I think it’s important to understand that, while federal courts–rather than state administrators–have pretty much been the go-to place for inmate rights suits, courts are not natural policy designers. The judicial system is built on the premise of case-by-case arbitration, with an outcome that “takes sides” in a dispute between two parties (Martin Shapiro calls this “the logic of the triad“). Their ability to generalize and supervise is limited. The ways they perceive the world, discursively, are limited to assessing whether state agencies behaved in a way that violated constitutional standards – yes or no. Orders, supervision, revisiting issues–courts do all of those, but they do them because they have to. The hard work has to be done primarily by the state. Which is why, whenever possible, having a consent decree is a priority, and if that is impossible, it is at least useful to get some cooperation from the state and refrain from steps that will escalate the animosity between the state and the courts.

The escalation here–actually threatening the Governor with contempt–is understandable if one considers what Jerry has done in the last few weeks. He has attacked the special masters and receiver, and even griped about attorney’s fees for the inmates’ advocates. When seen in the context of this public relations crusade to besmirch the other side and the court-ordered mechanism, a threat of contempt is a logical response. And of course, the state retaliates by threatening an appeal to the Supreme Court. This is a collision course that will not end well, and it would behoove the Governor, and the state representatives, to consider growing up and collaborating with the courts. As things stand now, everyone has plenty to lose.

More From Jerry: Federal Prison Oversight a Waste of Money?

Photo credit Randall Benton for the Sac Bee.

After Governor Brown’s public comments about attorney’s fees for inmate rights’ litigators – on which we had plenty to say here and on The Recorder – he’s back to it this morning. The Sac Bee reports:

“During the life of these lawsuits, the prison health care budget has gone from $700 million to $2 billion,” Brown said in an interview with The Bee, his first on the issue since the state filed court documents in January seeking to regain control of its prisons. 

“That money is coming out of the university, it’s coming out of child care. It’s a situation you wouldn’t dream anyone would want.” 

The governor’s comments came as lawyers prepare for a battle in Sacramento federal court later this month over whether the state is providing a constitutional level of mental health and medical care for inmates. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 27 on California’s motion to terminate oversight of mental health care by U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton. 

Another motion by the state, also filed in January, seeks to vacate or modify an order by a specially convened three-judge court to reduce inmate population. Oral arguments on that motion have not yet been scheduled. 

Really, Jerry? Really? You reap what you sow. Why is the prison health care budget so costly? It’s true that mistreating and ignoring people’s medical plight is cheaper than actually treating them, but perhaps if treating them is so expensive then one should have considered whether so many of them should have been in prison in the first place. And whose fault is it that prison expenditures are higher than what we spend on education and child care? Complaining about this given that the government is the culprit is absurd, offensive, and inflammatory.

New CDCR Chief: Jeffrey Beard

New chief of California’s prisons named

Jeffrey Beard, the former head of Pennsylvania’s prisons, favors shorter sentences and community treatment. The appointment is subject to Senate confirmation.

Jeffrey BeardJeffrey Beard, 65, the retired former Pennsylvania prisons chief, has been named to run California’s prison system. (Pennsylvania Department of Corre, )

By Paige St. John, Los Angeles TimesDecember 19, 2012, 7:51 p.m.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday named a vocal advocate of shorter sentences and community treatment to run the state’s crowded and troubled prison system.
Brown announced the selection of Jeffrey Beard, 65, the retired former Pennsylvania prisons chief, to succeed Matthew Cate, who stepped down last month after four years as secretary of corrections in California. Cate is now leader of the California State Assn. of Counties.
Beard, whose appointment is subject to Senate confirmation, spent nearly four decades in corrections in Pennsylvania, starting as a counselor and advancing to prison warden, eventually spending nine years as department head. He completed an expansion of that state’s prison system, including the addition of 32,000 inmate beds.
He left in 2010, advocating for laws that put more criminals into work-treatment programs instead of prisons, telling lawmakers that an “over-reliance” on locking up non-serious offenders did little to improve public safety.
Though an official start date was not announced, Beard joins Brown’s administration at a critical time. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has until Jan. 7 to produce a plan for reducing prison crowding or face the renewed threat of federal orders to release inmates early.
In addition, a federal receiver is attempting to negotiate terms for California to resume control over the delivery of healthcare to inmates. And the parole and healthcare divisions are laying off staff.
In announcing the appointment, Brown said Beard “has arrived at the right time to take the next steps in returning California’s parole and correctional institutions to their former luster.”
Beard’s successor in Pennsylvania says Beard will fit right in.
“I think you guys hit a home run,” said Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary John Wetzel.
Wetzel, who was appointed eight months after Beard retired, said the former director weighed in frequently with crucial advice and provided input on new legislation intended to reduce prison crowding in that state and on expanding community treatment and diversion programs.
In 2008, Beard lent support to a proposal to ease county jail crowding by sending felons serving more than two years to state prison. But it allowed for medical release and early release of nonviolent offenders who completed treatment and education programs.
Andy Hoover, legislative director for the Pennsylvania branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Beard played an active role in developing corrections policies and promoting them before the Legislature.
But Beard has critics as well, some of whom hold him responsible for expanding the use of solitary confinement in Pennsylvania and for a two-month moratorium on parole releases after the murders of two Philadelphia police officers. The moratorium caused such overcrowding that Pennsylvania began sending inmates to serve time in other states.
Hoover said Beard was caught in a political bind, carrying out policies he had not set. “He was in an unfortunate position,” Hoover said. “It was very much out of his hands.”
Corrections historian Dan Berger, who was working on his doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania at the time, disagrees.
“Beard does not have a good reputation on health and human rights in prison,” Berger said. “He gives more rhetoric to sentencing reform than believes it.”
After retiring in 2010, Beard joined Pennsylvania State University‘s Justice Center for Research, and he has worked as a private consultant to a number of states, including California. He advised Sacramento on litigation over the care and housing of mentally ill offenders and has toured California prisons.
Beard is not shy about voicing opinions on where the criminal justice system fails. In 2010, he told Pennsylvania lawmakers that heavy reliance on incarceration of low-level offenders “has proven to have limited value in maintaining public safety.”
“We must stop treating all offenders the same and move away from the ‘get tough on crime’ philosophy of locking up less serious offenders for longer periods of time,” he told them.
In a 2005 commentary in an industry publication, Beard called for a rethinking of “who really belongs in prison” and an end to the then-popular “scared straight” programs he felt increased the likelihood that freed inmates would commit future crimes. “We must have the will to put an end to feel-good and/or publicly popular programs that simply do not work,” Beard wrote.
Corrections officials said Beard was unavailable Wednesday but released a single statement quoting the incoming secretary as saying he was “honored” to be appointed “for this important public safety position.”
paige.stjohn@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-corrections-chief-20121220,0,7507985.story

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From CJCJ on SB 210 on pretrial release

Legislation to provide more opportunities for unsentenced detainees

submitted on Tue, 08/21/2012 – 14:06 by Catherine McCracken

In California, local county jail bed space is not always for the guilty.  Approximately 50,000 un-sentenced individuals are confined to the state’s county jails, awaiting their time before a judge.  A majority of these individuals are confined to local jails because they are not able to post bail .  This contributes to the 71% state average of un-sentenced individuals in county jails.  These individuals haven not necessarily been deemed a flight-risk or a danger to society; they just lack the fiscal resources to secure release back into the community.  This structure is both inefficient and expensive.  Further, the collateral consequences of unnecessary incarceration are expansive as time spent confined to local jail is often idle time away from employment, education, and families.
Under Realignment, California’s counties have seen an increased responsibility for managing non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders.  This has caused some difficulty for some local jurisdictions that have historically relied on incarceration at both the state and local level.  So, how do local criminal justice decision-makers manage available bed space without constructing expensive new jails?    
Some counties such as Santa Cruz and San Francisco have been exploring local alternatives to incarceration that have alleviated capacity problems with bed space in their jail system.  These two counties in particular have invested in non-custodial options, which have resulted in the counties’ ability to manage the new responsibilities under Realignment.  For example, Santa Cruz County implemented a wide array of community-based alternatives for the pre-trial population that resulted in a local un-sentenced population that is 20% below the state average.  
Additionally, several counties like Santa Cruz utilize nationally-recognized risk assessment tools to determine if an arrested individual poses no flight risk or risk to public safety; therefore, can be released before their trial on their “own recognizance” (OR), or lightly supervised by the county.  Such individuals also receive pretrial services like drug counseling.  Pretrial interventions such as these have aided in the reduction of Santa Cruz’s pre-trial population.
Yet not all counties have implemented such measures to reduce their jail populations, nor do they believe they have the legal authority to do so.  Therefore, organizations such the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have taken steps, through Senate Bill 210 , to propose new laws that would require the Courts to consider “own recognizance” pretrial release for certain populations of defendants.  By adding this additional step in the court process, current jail detainees who may not be financially able to post their own bail may be able to be released if they meet the conditions of OR.  Additionally, the legislation would clarify the legal authority of the Courts, county sheriffs, and probation departments to conduct risk assessments on the un-sentenced population.
 

This legislation supports the creation of an efficient and fiscally responsible criminal justice system.  By recognizing not all detainees must remain in jail before trial, justice stakeholders are better able to serve those offenders that require confinement.  Maintaining strong community ties for those individuals able to be released on their own recognizance has long-term positive impacts in reducing recidivism rates and improving public safety.     
http://www.cjcj.org/post/adult/corrections/legislation/provide/more/opportunities/unsentenced/detainees

Pretrial Release: From CJCJ on SB 210

Legislation to provide more opportunities for unsentenced detainees

submitted on Tue, 08/21/2012 – 14:06 by Catherine McCracken

In California, local county jail bed space is not always for the guilty.  Approximately 50,000 un-sentenced individuals are confined to the state’s county jails, awaiting their time before a judge.  A majority of these individuals are confined to local jails because they are not able to post bail .  This contributes to the 71% state average of un-sentenced individuals in county jails.  These individuals haven not necessarily been deemed a flight-risk or a danger to society; they just lack the fiscal resources to secure release back into the community.  This structure is both inefficient and expensive.  Further, the collateral consequences of unnecessary incarceration are expansive as time spent confined to local jail is often idle time away from employment, education, and families.
Under Realignment, California’s counties have seen an increased responsibility for managing non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders.  This has caused some difficulty for some local jurisdictions that have historically relied on incarceration at both the state and local level.  So, how do local criminal justice decision-makers manage available bed space without constructing expensive new jails?    
Some counties such as Santa Cruz and San Francisco have been exploring local alternatives to incarceration that have alleviated capacity problems with bed space in their jail system.  These two counties in particular have invested in non-custodial options, which have resulted in the counties’ ability to manage the new responsibilities under Realignment.  For example, Santa Cruz County implemented a wide array of community-based alternatives for the pre-trial population that resulted in a local un-sentenced population that is 20% below the state average.  
Additionally, several counties like Santa Cruz utilize nationally-recognized risk assessment tools to determine if an arrested individual poses no flight risk or risk to public safety; therefore, can be released before their trial on their “own recognizance” (OR), or lightly supervised by the county.  Such individuals also receive pretrial services like drug counseling.  Pretrial interventions such as these have aided in the reduction of Santa Cruz’s pre-trial population.
Yet not all counties have implemented such measures to reduce their jail populations, nor do they believe they have the legal authority to do so.  Therefore, organizations such the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have taken steps, through Senate Bill 210 , to propose new laws that would require the Courts to consider “own recognizance” pretrial release for certain populations of defendants.  By adding this additional step in the court process, current jail detainees who may not be financially able to post their own bail may be able to be released if they meet the conditions of OR.  Additionally, the legislation would clarify the legal authority of the Courts, county sheriffs, and probation departments to conduct risk assessments on the un-sentenced population.
 

This legislation supports the creation of an efficient and fiscally responsible criminal justice system.  By recognizing not all detainees must remain in jail before trial, justice stakeholders are better able to serve those offenders that require confinement.  Maintaining strong community ties for those individuals able to be released on their own recognizance has long-term positive impacts in reducing recidivism rates and improving public safety.     
http://www.cjcj.org/post/adult/corrections/legislation/provide/more/opportunities/unsentenced/detainees