State issues in the correctional system.
Death Penalty Focus is organizing a Day of Action to end the death penalty on June 30, 2009. The date is scheduled to coincide with the public hearing regarding the reformed execution proceedings using lethal injection, which we reported about here.
In keeping with the financial crisis and humonetarianism themes, here’s the ACLU of Northern California report on the costs of the death penalty and the potential savings that might result from its abolition, which we discussed here, here and here.
A while ago, we reported on the Governor’s plan to divert “wobbler” offenses from state prisons to local jails. As expected, local authorities are reacting very badly to this plan to pass the buck. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Local law-enforcement officials warn that an influx of new inmates could force them to release their own prisoners to make room.
Changing sentencing guidelines would eventually steer 20,000 inmates away from state prisons to county jails, Mr. Schwarzenegger estimates. California’s county jails now hold about 80,000 inmates, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
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Local governments are hurting for money as badly as the state is — with some of the pain coming as a result of reduced state funding. Many have cut budgets for their own local jails and detention facilities. “It’s like a double whammy the state is sending our way,” said Mike Reagan, a Solano County supervisor. “More prisoners and less money — this is going to hurt like hell.”
Mr. Reagan estimated his county would need to take an additional 1,200 inmates a year under Mr. Schwarzenegger’s plan. That would overwhelm its jail system, which has reached capacity at 1,000 inmates, he said.
Meanwhile, the financial crisis is generating plans that go beyond the non-punitive trend that we have called humonetarianism; it is also generating an abundance of plans that consist of playing with the statistics to make the problem appear smaller, in a manner reminiscent to the classic “juking the stats” scenes from The Wire, which is all too common in the criminal justice system. This category of solutions includes the treatment of undocumented immigrants, and especially the process of handing them to the feds. Engaging in these magic feats – making a population seem to disappear while, in reality, it doesn’t – may prove to be a big mistake. The silver lining of the economic crisis is that it presents an opportunity for change, and hiding our overcrowding problem under the carpet means missing that opportunity completely, at someone else’s expense.
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Props to a friend who chooses to remain anonymous for sending the WSJ piece my way.
The Sacramento Bee reports:
State Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth said today that most of his GOP colleagues oppose early release for illegal immigrant inmates or other state prisoners to help reduce the state’s $24.3 billion deficit.
“We don’t want to see early release. We don’t want to see criminal aliens being released to the federal government and then deported and returning back to the streets and communities ofCalifornia – for a very small amount of savings, by the way,” Hollingsworth, the SenateRepublican leader, told The Bee’s Capitol Bureau in an interview. The GOP holds 15 out of 40 seats in the state Senate.
As expected, Governor Schwarzenegger’s call to legalize marijuana did not generate a wall-to-wall consensus. One organization that rejects the idea of legalizing and taxing marijuana is DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which published today a piece in which they argue that marijuana is too harmful to be decriminalized:
“Legalization is not a path we want to pursue,” Dr. Kar added. “This is sending a message that use of marijuana is okay. If marijuana is legalized, people and especially young people, will tend to look at it and think, ‘Well, if it’s legal, it can’t be too harmful.’ It is by no means the benign drug that some would have us think. The most complete, objective and reliable scientific evidence is entirely in the other direction. We would run the risk of having a rise in a sicker and nonproductive population, which would be further detrimental to the state’s economy, if more people were to begin using marijuana.”
These concerns bring up a host of questions, some of which have to do with the medical assessment of harm stemming from marijuana abuse (read more about that debate in Eric Schlosser’s Reefer Madness), and some of which have to do with behavioral economics; namely, whether a change in legal status would lead more people to use marijuana. This last complex question has been the focus of a variety of studies on drug usage deterrence, including the masterful work of Rob MacCoun and Peter Reuter, who also draw parallels from other vices.
Since the death penalty was abolished for juveniles in Roper v. Simmons, public debate has shifted to the issue of life without the possibility of parole for juveniles. The most recent news on this come from the California Senate Committee, which, according to the Chron, approved Senator Yee’s bill to eliminate LWOP for juveniles and substitute it for sentences of 25 years to life.
The bill would overturn a component of Proposition 115, a tough-on-crime ballot initiative passed by voters in 1990.
The legislation pits law enforcement groups, which argue that there are teens who commit such horrendous crimes that they should spend the rest of their lives in prison, against some child psychiatrists and religious groups, which argue that teens’ brains are still developing and even those who kill should be given a chance at redemption. Parole would be granted only to inmates who convinced both the state’s parole board and governor that they deserve to be released.
Those interested in more information about the special problems concerning juveniles on LWOP might find interest in a PBS debate on the matter, or in the Frontline documentary When Kids Get Life.
Our recent posts and discussion of the budget cuts made me think more generally about how the financial crisis can be an opportunity to reverse the punitive pendulum. My op-ed in the San Francisco Bay Guardian offers some ideas in that direction, which may not be new to readers of this blog. I hope we’ll be able to rise to the occasion and make the most of what is a very dire situation.
The SF Bay Guardian political blog features Just A Guy’s perspective on how a policy of early releases with no rehabilitation programs to speak of is destined to fail.