Democracy Now! devoted an episode to the San Quentin COVID-19 disaster, including conversations with folks on the inside, as well as Ella Baker Center’s State Campaigner James King, commenting on the structure of Quentin and why it is incompatible with healthcare:
Today at 1pm, the #StopSanQuentinOutbreak coalition is hosting a virtual press conference on FB Live, featuring updates on the situation in prison, the Plata v. Newsomlitigation, and the habeas corpus cases that have been consolidated at the Marin Superior Court. FYI, I am authoring the brief on behalf of amici curiae the ACLU of Northern California and twenty of my colleagues, criminal justice and corrections experts. I will post the brief in full here after it is filed.
The first article based on data collected by the UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project is out from JAMA, showing that the the adjusted COVID-19 mortality rate in the prison population is 3.0 times higher than would be expected if the age and sex distributions of the US and prison populations were equal.
Finally, my article California’s COVID-19 Prison Disaster and the Trap of Palatable Reform is out from Boom California and offered free to the public on Boom’s open access platform. I decided to publish with Boom, rather than with a paywalled academic journal, because I think it is crucial for anyone in CA who is looking for background on this crisis to learn the background and understand why the proposed solutions are inadequate. Please share widely with your networks.
I’m noticing public attention wavering away from the San Quentin disaster, and my concern is that the slowing down of the contagion has lulled people into a false assumption that the prison is doing what it should and conquering this challenge. Lest you believe this, let’s talk about what’s happened in other places. Avenal (pictured above) is a case in point. As in previous posts, Chad Goerzen and I are using CDCR’s own data, from the COVID-19 tracking tool.
The outbreak in Avenal happened early on in the pandemic, and was probably one of the most severe outbreaks before the transfer from CIM to Quentin. Avenal’s casualties were among the first behind bars, too. At the beginning of June, most tests were coming in negative, and prison authorities probably thought that the outbreak had abated. Then, in mid-July, case numbers started climbing up again.
Another example is CIW, pictured below. Note the alarming numbers in early May, the decline in testing (and in cases! in late May and in June, and then the spike in numbers of cases in mid- to late-July.
There are other examples of apparent abatement followed by a resurgence of the outbreak. Here’s the data for CMC, where initially there were only a handful of cases. As opposed to other prisons, you can see that CMC continued to test people periodically, on a weekly basis, even when they had no contagion, and the in late July they caught a new wave with dozens of new infections.
Here’s the picture for Corcoran, which seems to have had three waves of outbreak. You’ll note that one of them followed the ill-fated transfer from Chino. Corcoran did test a lot of people in early July and found no infections, but toward mid- to late-July we’re seeing infections again.
Finally, here’s a more ambiguous resurgence in LA County State Prison. Note that this prison was conducting very few tests between the two waves, so what they are seeing from early July onward could simply be a consequence of the increased testing.
What can we learn from this, particularly from the examples of Avenal and CIW? The obvious takeaway is that a serious outbreak does not protect a prison from a recurrence. There are numerous reasons for this. The jury’s apparently still out as to the extent to which recent infection and recovery effectively inoculate a person against a recurrence. It seems that people who get reinfected are less contagious, but this is highly dependent upon their medical condition and environmental immunosuppression (and there’s no absolute certainty that the person was actually reinfected after recovery, rather than just continuously sick or just expelling dead cells.) If, indeed, reinfection is possible–whether or not to the same contagious extent–then a mere staff member who gets takeout on the way home could restart the cycle. But this is exacerbated by the renewal of prison transfers which, I believe, start again today. We now know, because (or, actually, despite) the scant reporting from BSCC, that several jails are hotbeds of COVID-19, with dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of infections. The slow drip of people out of state prisons is going to be offset by the incoming bottleneck of people from jails, and one can only hope against hope that they’ll bother testing people on both ends of the transfer this time.
In short, keep your eyes on the human rights crime. It’s slowing down not because we are succeeding, but because the virus is succeeding. And state officials–at the Governor’s mansion, at the prisons, at the courts–are not doing enough to stop it in its tracks.
During this pandemic, I’ve seen some hate-baiting news coverage of the COVID-19 disaster in prisons, but today’s article in the L.A. Times truly takes the cake. I am astonished at the unfortunate choice to title the article “California is releasing some murderers due to COVID-19. Some say it should free more” (UPDATE: as you can see from the picture above, our feedback helped and they changed the tone of the headline.) The “some” to which the original headline referred, who are discussed in a mocking and discrediting tone in the piece, represent robust, decades-long criminological evidence that the distinction between so-called “violent” and “nonviolent” offender is meaningless from a public safety perspective.
It is incomprehensible that, as a deadly pandemic ravages prisons and inflicts punishments that can’t be found anywhere in the California Penal Code, the L.A. Times recurs to these cheap tropes to attract its readerships. The writers chose to interview victims who, while entitled to their personal opinions, are not the statewide curators of victims’ perspectives, and do not represent the thousands of compassionate human beings whose lives were wrecked by violent crime and nonetheless believe that prisoners were not sentenced do die by COVID-19. They also, astoundingly, dragged–yet again!–the tired trope of Willie Horton to foment hatred and dehumanization.
Because I think this is shameful, lazy, hate-baiting journalism, and because I don’t need to read newspapers whose criminal justice analysis hasn’t progressed since the Reagan Administration, I am canceling my subscription to the Los Angeles Times. If you share my views, give their customer service department a piece of your mind tomorrow morning: 213-283-2274.
The union that represents health care workers, clerical staff, custodians and other prison employees, SEIU Local 1000, has filed a wide-ranging grievance against CDCR and CCHCS (the Federal Receiver’s prison health services) for employing them, throughout the state, in unsafe conditions. Megan Cassidy for the San Francisco Chronicle reports:
The grievance, filed July 28, alleges that union officials documented safety violations at all 35 prisons owned and operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or CDCR.
“Some of these prisons have already had serious COVID-19 outbreaks,” the grievance states. “(Prison and prison health care officials) should still be able to prevent outbreaks if they take all possible and reasonable steps to prevent them.”
The grievance lists numerous violations:
Inadequate supply of hand sanitizer machines and disinfecting wipes
Common areas at worksite are not being cleaned throughout the day
No training received on the state’s COVID-19 health and safety guidelines
Employees are not getting notice when someone at your worksite has tested positive for COVID-19
Not everyone at institution wears a mask
Six foot physical distance is not being maintained at worksite
Failure of adequate testing of staff and inmates
Transfer of inmates without adequate testing [this pertains to the infamous transfer from Chino, which brought COVID-19 to Quentin and Corcoran–HA]
Failure to quarantine or isolate inmates with suspected exposure
Failure to maintain adequate internal command or control
Failure to provide safety protocols to protect staff from infection
Inadequate supplies and types of PPE
The union demands taking the following steps:
Take all necessary steps to ensure employee health and safety
Ensure that each institution has a COVID-19 incident command center with both medical and custody staff
Have a clear written plan for spaces/areas that will be utilized to isolate/quarantine suspected and COVID-19 confirmed inmates at each institution.
Ensure that management at all levels understands their responsibilities and role in preventing the further spread of COVID-19.
Halt the movement of inmates between prisons and intakes from counties [this is crucial because, as I learned today on Twitter from people on the inside, transfers are scheduled to resume this coming Monday – HA]
Ensure that DAI and CCHCS are doing everything possible to maintain six foot physical distance between persons (including allowing all employees possible to telework), providing adequate hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes and are enforcing that everyone wear masks/or face coverings
Ensure that all employees are trained with the latest State of California health and safety guidelines and that all employees are noticed about possible COVID-19 exposure at their worksite.
This was a long time coming; I’m surprised the union is taking these steps only now, but there’s something else that bothers me. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, Scotland Yard Inspector Gregory asks Sherlock Holmes, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes replies, “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory says, “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” To which Holmes answers, “That was the curious incident.” I bring this up because, if there’s any union that should expected to vociferously defend the interests, safety, and health of its members, it’s the strongest union in California— the CCPOA.
I’ve spent quite a while today on the CCPOA’s website, trying to find a sliver of a reference to COVID-19. Nothing on the front page; nothing under “news and information.” They do take care to mention a study according to which PTSD rates among prison guards rivals that of war veterans and to take pride in a 5% salary raise from 2019, but nothing whatsoever about the obvious. CCPOA guards face as much risk from the virus as the workers represented by SEIU Local 1000; the CDCR reporting system does not distinguish between guards and other staff members. To-date, CDCR reports 1976 COVID-19 cases among staff, as well as eight deaths.
CCPOA is not a particularly timid union. As Josh Page explains in his wonderful book about the union, CCPOA has been at the helm of much of the punitive animus in California, branding itself as a tough-on-crime organization and partnering with (or puppeteering) Crime Victims United of California, with whom CCPOA shares numerous board members. CCPOA and CVU are largely responsible for the public perception of punitivism as natural and ubiquitous, a perception not shared by many survivors of violent crime. And here we have a matter that’s not about fancy penological philosophy, but is actually the bread-and-butter of what a union is supposed to do: protect its members’ health and safety on the job. Instead, here’s what the Sac Bee reports about their salary negotiations with Gov. Newsom:
California correctional officers would take one furlough day per month and defer raises for two years under a proposed agreement their union has negotiated with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration.
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association’s two-year agreement appears to be the first deal a state union has reached with the administration over pay cuts Newsom proposed for all state workers to help address a projected $54 billion budget deficit.
The tentative agreement will require a vote from the union’s 26,000 members to pass and will need approval from the Legislature.
The agreement uses a personal leave program to reduce officers’ pay by 4.5% — roughly the equivalent of one day of work per month — for two years. In exchange, the officers receive 12 hours of paid leave per month, the equivalent of one and a half days of work.
A 3% raise the officers were scheduled to receive July 1 is deferred until July 1, 2022.
The agreement would reduce the state’s spending on correctional officers by 8.99%, or about $395 million, according to a cost summary of the agreement. Correctional officers make up a large share of the state’s general fund spending on its workforce, accounting for about a third of general fund payroll spending.
Newsom’s original proposal of two unpaid leave days would have reduced the state’s spending on the group by 9.53%, or about $419 million, according to the summary.
The agreement softens the impact of the cuts on correctional officers’ pocketbooks by suspending a paycheck deduction that funds the health care plans they’ll use in retirement. That change allows workers’ to keep 4% of their paycheck that had been going to future health care costs.
The state also would cover an increase to health insurance costs of .54 percent, according to the summary.
The deal would suspend holiday pay for seven of the 11 state holidays, eliminate one personal development day for the term of the agreement, suspend night and weekend differentials and make other tweaks to pay.
This is not great for CCPOA, though it does somewhat soften the blow of the salary cuts. But how could CCPOA negotiate with the Governor, amidst a pandemic, and not mention their working conditions, even in passing?
The curious thing about the guards’ COVID-19 interests is that the best thing that can be done for them, which is, obviously, mass releases to allow for social distancing and minimally competent healthcare, stands in opposition to what their leadership has advocated for in the last forty years. CCPOA built its power advocating for more and longer prison sentences, getting its political cache from being “the toughest beat” and from the sheer enormity of the California correctional apparatus. But this does not necessarily reflect the rational self-interest of its members, which even in ordinary times would find it safer and easier to wrangle and supervise fewer people in a less crowded facility. In that respect, the virus is not so much reversing the interests of the guards as it is putting them in clearer focus. And if this is the case, then it seems that CCPOA is not really representing its members properly, and we’re seeing a pretty dire example of political capture.
Yesterday, in a 5-4 vote, SCOTUS stayed a lower court’s preliminary injunction that required the Orange County Sheriff to implement certain COVID-19 safety measures. The decision, Barnes v. Ahlman, is brief, with only Justice Sotomayor writing for the dissent (what a superb law-and-society Justice she is–and a fantastic writer.) Before delving into the decision, it’s worthwhile looking at the BSCC reports for the OC, which I’ve placed above. Now, the webpage claims that they updated it yesterday, but it also claims that the numbers we’re seeing are for the week between 7/19 and 7/25, which is adds to my impression that BSCC reporting, which is already woefully late to the game, needs considerable improvement if it is to be informative. For what it’s worth, during that week–and things might’ve exponentially spread since then–the OC jail system had at least 17 cases and had tested less than 10% of their population. Moreover, Justice Sotomayor writes that “[a]t the time of the District Court’s injunction, the Jail had witnessed an increase of more than 300 confirmed COVID–19 cases in a little over a month.” You wouldn’t know this from the BSCC page, because for unfathomable reasons they don’t report cumulative cases, nor do they provide the data they had before the dashboard was created. I really hope that the COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project will be able to obtain better information, including cumulative and historical numbers–apparently the numbers exist, because local newspapers were reporting on them weeks ago–but I’m not holding my breath. In any case, putting together Justice Sotomayor’s summary and the BSCC data points to a worrisome situation: they’ve had hundreds of cases and they are currently doing hardly any testing, which could explain why they numbers seem small.
Anyway, back to the decision. Justice Sotomayor refers to the decision to stay the injunction as “extraordinary.” Ordinarily, the conditions for granting a stay require (1) a “reasonable probability” that SCOTUS will actually grant certiorari to hear the case, (2) a “fair prospect” that SCOTUS will subsequently reverse the decision on the merits, and (3) “a likelihood that irreparable harm [will] result from the denial of a stay”. None of these apply here: the Ninth Circuit ruled on clearly established law–it found ample proof of “deliberate indifference” because the jails were forewarned about this months ago and knew the risks–and, even if the Eighth Amendment is not grounds enough for relief, there is an alternative claim under the ADA. Therefore, odds that SCOTUS will hear this case and reverse are slim. Worst of all, the “likelihood of irreparable harm” is obvious from the facts, described in “dozens of inmate declarations”:
Although the Jail had been warned that “social distancing is the cornerstone of reducing transmission of COVID–19,” inmates described being transported back and forth to the jail in crammed buses, socializing in dayrooms with no space to distance physically, lining up next to each other to wait for the phone, sleeping in bunk beds two to three feet apart, and even being ordered to stand closer than six feet apart when inmates tried to socially distance. Moreover, although the Jail told its inmates that they could “best protect” themselves by washing their hands with “soap and water throughout the day,” numerous inmates reported receiving just one small, hotel-sized bar of soap per week. And after symptomatic inmates were removed from their units, other inmates were ordered to dispose of their belongings without gloves or other protective equipment. Finally, despite the Jail’s stated policy to test and isolate individuals who reported or exhibited symptoms consistent with COVID–19, multiple symptomatic detainees described being denied tests, and others recounted sharing common spaces with infected or symptomatic inmates.
That the Sheriff’s Department gets to benefit from a pattern of recklessness and obfuscation is sickening in itself, but what’s really sickening is that even as I type this, more cases are preventable. What kind of public official spends their times and resources fighting an order to implement sensible precautions, instead of actually implementing them? BSCC’s feebleness is all over this, starting with the flimsy data collection effort and continuing with these disturbing practices at the county level. The other thing that nauseates me is that there’s no reason to assume that everything is tickety-boo at the other jails, and we now need to expand our list of “known unknowns” at the county level to actual practices of the ground. We can’t make definitive extrapolations from this OC example without knowing more, but if the OC “inmate health and safety” is just a facade, there’s no assurance that other jails are following their own COVID-19 protocols.
As I’m collaborating with a legal effort that might help some people at San Quentin get home, safe(r) from the raging pandemic, members of the #StopSanQuentinOutbreak forwarded me this video, which was broadcast on yesterday’s news. Will you just watch this, please, and answer me–what kind of world is this?
Finally, the BSCC has published its COVID-19 data on juvenile and adult county facilities. But don’t rejoice yet: it’s very sparse. For Alameda County, Santa Rita Jail is still seeing active infections, as you see above. Thankfully, so far no cases in Alameda youth facilities, but they also report having done less than 11 cases (which could or could not mean zero tests.)
Things look grimmer, as you’d expect, in Fresno, where people in jail are suing the sheriff over inadequate prevention and treatment. Note that, to get a sense of the cumulative outbreak, you need to look at “adult outcomes” at the bottom. They report 507 cases resolved (how many of these folks were released? hospitalized? isolated? no answers.)
I’m not sure why this tool isn’t providing us with an aggregate picture for jails, like the CDCR one does, but I’m glad it at least groups jails from the same county on the same page. I would have liked to see the juvenile and adult jails on the same page. In any case, this allows me to overlay data from the L.A. Times for each county onto the situation in the jails and show how the traffic of staff and residents between the community and the institution operates. My suspicion is that, given the shorter stays in jails, we’re going to see more interactions between jails and the community. I also worry about whether some of these places are acting now as “bottlenecks” because local prisons are seeing outbreaks.
In other news, CCI and Avenal are in very bad shape, again, which indicates that we cannot assume that the outbreak truly abated there (or, for that matter, anywhere else where there’s no new infections.)
After a spike in early June and an apparent abatement, COVID-19 is once again tearing through the California Institute for Women (CIW) in Chino. In the last 14 days, the prison tested 1,200 of its 1,413 residents (housed in a facility designed to hold 1,398 people – slightly above 100% capacity.) The testing count on the tracking tool seems to suggest testing done in batches, but we don’t know how they are managing isolation in a crowded facility–hopefully not taking a page from the book of this women’s prison in Texas.
CIW is of special interest to me, because a few days ago we learned that Leslie van Houten, who is serving her sentence there, has been yet again recommended for parole. Van Houten has been consistently recommended for parole since 2017, but governors–first Brown, now Newsom–keep reversing the recommendation for what seems to me, after having pored over 50 years’ worth of her prison record, purely political reasons. Van Houten has maintained a clean disciplinary record, participated in a variety of laudable programs, and incessantly excavated her psyche to show “insight” to the Board. She participated in the murders when she was 19 years old, manipulated and sexually exploited in a setting that, with today’s #MeToo sensibilities, might have shed a completely different light on her involvement.
I mention van Houten’s case because it is emblematic of the dilemma that Gov. Newsom faces with countless other cases. The right thing to do is to release older prisoners, who are more vulnerable to the virus; these people, who serve long sentences, are serving them for violent crimes they committed decades ago. Everything we know about life course criminology supports the prediction that they pose no risk to public safety–they themselves face a risk by remaining behind bars.
In Yesterday’s Monsters I explain how the Manson family cases came to shape California’s extreme punishment regime, and how these cases were impacted by this new regime in turn. This is the chance for a politician who has consistently ran, and prevailed, on a platform of doing the right thing in the face of baseless political pressures. There is no ambiguity about the right thing to do now. Van Houten is 70 years old, has been consistently found to pose very low risk to public safety by actuarial instruments and by everyone who has interacted with her, and there’s a pandemic going on.
Van Houten is not the only person at CIW facing these risks. Just a few days ago, advocates were overjoyed to welcome home Patricia Wright, a 69-year-old cancer patient who doctors say has mere months to live, after she served 23 years in prison. Wright’s release encouraged me, given the infuriating and heartbreaking scene just eleven years ago at Susan Atkins’ last hearing. Perhaps the pandemic is driving home, finally, the message that allowing an older person to die at home with their loved ones, or live out in peace the few years they have left, is not a weakness, nor a slight to the victims. Perhaps it is driving home the message that compassion is an essential component of our humanity. Will Gov. Newsom choose to do the right thing for van Houten and other women at CIW, from both public health and public safety perspectives, or will he succumb to unfounded public pressure, hysteria, and fear?
Today’s Chronicle features a great article by Bob Egelko, which tries to parse out who is responsible for the San Quentin catastrophe. Getting into the chain of command that made the botched transfer decision might come in handy at a later date, I think, when the time comes to file the inevitable (and more than justified) lawsuit. But, as I said in the article, the time to squabble over who’s at fault has not come yet. Right now we must have all hands on deck, including Gov. Newsom, Mr. Kelso, and Mr. Diaz, making prison releases their absolute top priority.
By now, regular readers of my COVID-19 prison crisis posts know that Gov. Newsom’s plan to release a mere 8,000 people over the course of the summer will not suffice to curb infections, illnesses, and death in prison. You also know that, at least with regard to San Quentin–an antiquated facility that lacks proper ventilation–the physicians at AMEND recommended an immediate population reduction by 50%. But how is it to be done?
The #StopSanQuentinOutbreak coalition, and the Prison Advocacy Network (PAN) have useful, well-researched answers, which are encapsulated in the lovely infographic above. Here are the coalition’s demands, and here’s the PAN page offering legal resources and pathways to release. I want to spend this post getting into the particulars. Before doing so, though, I need to explain a few important things.The Prisoner Advocacy Network has a list of pathways to release.
A lot of the categories in Newsom’s current release plan make sense and show evidence of public health thinking. They are considering age, medical condition, and time left on people’s sentences. The problem with the categories is that they are unnecessarily restrictive, and I think the restrictions can be attributed to two hangups that many people, including well-meaning, educated folks, share about prison releases: the fear that releasing a lot of people is going to be hugely expensive and the hangup around the violent/nonviolent distinction. So let’s tackle these two first.
Get over the hangup of re-entry costs. You may have read that BSCC is considering offering $15 million to CDCR, and might wonder how we can possibly pay for housing, temporary or permanent, of tens of thousands of people. Of course this is going to cost money; the question is, compared to what. It may shock you to learn that, in the 2018/2019 fiscal year, the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that the average cost to incarcerate one person in California for a year was $81,502 – more than a $30k increase since our recession-era prison population reduction in 2010-2011. How much does it cost to help such a person for a year, when their healthcare is funded by Obamacare, rather than by CDCR? Here’s a PPIC report from 2015 detailing alternatives to incarceration. Specifically with regard to COVID-19-related reentries, here’s another great infographic detailing what the needs are going to be. The big one is housing, and there are organizations on the ground that are set up to help with that. Even with transitional housing costs, this does not add up to $80k per person per year.
Get over the hangup of making the violent/nonviolent distinction. I am still seeing lots of well-intentioned folks who read Michelle Alexander years ago tweeting about how ending the war on drugs (with or without the hashtag), or focusing on so-called “nonviolent inmates” is the key to fighting this outbreak. I can’t really fault them for this misapprehension–what I can do is repeatedly present you with facts to correct it.
Take a look at the graph below. It comes from CDCR’s population data points from 2018. You will note that the vast majority of people in California prisons are serving time for a violent offense. Drug convictions are the smallest contributors to our prison population (this is of course not true for jails or for federal prisons; I’m talking about the state prison system.) I know we all love to say “dismantle” these days, but dismantling the war on drugs will do very little to reduce state prison population.
Now, take a look at CDCR’s Spring 2020 population projection. What you see in the diagram below are the reductions in population since 2010, and some projections for the years to come. The two big reductions were in 2011, following the Realignment, and, to a smaller extent, in 2015, following Prop. 47. Both of those propositions diverted drug offenders to the community corrections systems–jails and probation. If you care about the injustices of the war on drugs, your heart is in the right place, but this is simply not the most dire problem we are facing in the context of prison population reduction.
It is easier to talk about drugs and nonviolent offenders, because these are typically categories of people that evoke more sympathy from the press. My colleague Susan Turner at UCI has shown that risk assessment tools, when used properly and carefully, yield dependable predictive results, and these are not correlated with the crime of commitment. Because we were so married to the idea that only nonviolent folks need help and public support, our three major population reduction efforts–Realignment, Prop 47, and Prop 57–missed the mark on getting more reductions for little to no “price” of increased criminal activity. Whenever you see a headline lambasting the Governor or the Board of Parole Hearings for releasing a “murderer,” immediately ask yourself the two relevant questions: (1) How old is this person now, and (2) how long ago did they commit the crime? The answers should lead you to the robust insights of life course criminology: People age out of violent crime by their mid- to late-twenties, and at 50 they pose a negligible risk to public safety. Moreover, what a person was convicted of doesn’t tell you a full story of what their undetected criminal activity was like before they were incarcerated. Take a look at the homicide solving rates in California, as reported by the Orange County Register in 2017–a bit over 50%–and ask yourself whether the crime of conviction is telling you a story with any statistical meaning.
In short, my friend, take a breath, let go of your attachment to the violent/nonviolent distinction, and let’s find some real solutions. The #StopSanQuentin coalition has a more in-depth breakdown to offer. Generally speaking, the legal mechanisms to achieve this reduction were identified by UnCommon Law in their letter to the Governor–primarily, early releases, commutations, and parole. Section 8 of Article V of the CA Constitution vests the power to grant a “reprieve, pardon, or commutation” in the Governor. The Penal Code elaborates and explains the process. Section 8658 of the California Government Code provides an emergency release valve: “In any case in which an emergency endangering the lives of inmates of a state, county, or city penal or correctional institution has occurred or is imminent, the person in charge of the institution may remove the inmates from the institution. He shall, if possible, remove them to a safe and convenient place and there confine them as long as may be necessary to avoid the danger, or, if that is not possible, may release them. the Governor has the authority to grant mass clemencies in an emergency.”
To begin, there are some bulk populations which, if targeted for release, can deliver the kind of numbers we need to stop the epidemic. These three populations largely overlap, which might make it easier to tailor the remedies to capture the right people. About half of the CDCR population are people designated “low risk” by CDCR’s own admission. CDCR uses risk classification primarily for housing purposes, and their methodology–as well as their practice of overriding their own classification–have been found by LAO to be in dire need of overhaul. LAO and other researchers believe that CDCR’s use of the “low risk” category is too restrictive, and their exceptions to their own classification come from hangups around issues of crime of commitment. This chart from the LAO report tells a useful story: Most of our prison population is doing time for violent crime, and a quarter of it is 50 and older; given the length of sentences for violent crimes, and the fact that a quarter of CA prisoners is serving decades on one of the “extreme punishment trifecta” of sentences (death, LWOP, or life with parole), it’s not difficult to figure out where the older, lower risk people fit in.
Between a quarter to a third of the prison population, depends on how you count: People who have already served a long sentence. This is the time to question the marginal utility of serving a few more years after being in prison for decades. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, About 33,000 inmates are “second strikers,” about 9,000 of whom are released annually after serving about 3.5 years. Another 7,000 are “third strikers,” fewer than 100 of whom are released annually after serving about 17 years. Approximately 33,000 inmates are serving sentences of life or life without parole. Fewer than 1,000 of these inmates are released every year, typically after spending two or more decades behind bars.
23%: People Over 50. Not only does this population intersect with lower criminal risk and higher medical risk, it also correlated with cost. According to the Public Policy Institute of California and Pew center data they cite, in fiscal year 2015 the state spent $19,796 per inmate on health care–more than thrice the national average.
To this, we can add a few smaller populations, numbering a few thousand each. Let’s start with people on death row and people on life without parole, who have been exempted from pretty much any release valve possible. The Governor has the authority to commute both of those sentences to life with parole today, and this is probably the right course of action anyway, pandemic or no pandemic. We have a moratorium on the death penalty, which means no one is getting executed but we are still paying for expensive capital punishment litigation. Cut out the middle man and shift all these folks to life with parole. I talk about how these three sentences are indistinguishable anyway in Yesterday’s Monsters, chapter 2.
There are also, apparently, a few hundred people still incarcerated who have been recommended for parole and approved by the Governor–coalition members have identified a few dozen in San Quentin alone. If these people have been given the green light to be released, why are they still behind bars? As for people who have been recommended for release and still awaiting the Governor’s authorization, now’s the time to expedite that.
Finally, lifting the offense limitations on people from outbreak epicenters, people with medical conditions, and the like, should expand those numbers considerably, given the significant overlap between crime of commitment, length of sentence, age, and health condition.
My point is that all of this is eminently doable, and there would hardly be any downsides. If we can just let go of the tendency to view only one side of the cost equation, and of our hangup about the nonviolent/violent distinction, we can scale up the proposed release plan to the point that it will be effective. Let me end with this thought: Gov. Newsom announced that the goal is to reduce San Quentin population to close to 100% of design capacity. In a sane world, prisons that are at 100% occupancy are not a goal. They are a starting point.
August 14 Update: Jason Fagone has a gorgeous piece in today’s Chron explaining how we could achieve a 50% reduction today, with negligible impact on public safety.
Today, Chad Goerzen and I looked at the new numbers from the CDCR tool and laid them over the county numbers from the L.A. Times. A few patterns emerge. First, a lot of testing is being done at San Quentin, but the vast majority of tests are coming back negative. How much we can trust this given the lag between testing date and result date is an important question, but it is at least a little bit encouraging. Second, two places in particular, which had seen peaks and valleys in infections–Avenal and CIM–are seeing infections.
For today, though, I want to point out something striking: Out of the top 15 counties in terms of infection numbers, 12 also have prisons that have seen new infections in the last 14 days. Look at the graph on the top. The picture is incomplete (we need data on detention centers and jails) but it is striking. Without contact tracing it is impossible to tell a causal story, but this correlation should be enough to easily counter the assumption that prisons are somehow separate from the community, or worse, that there’s some trade off between saving lives behind bars and on the outside. The virus doesn’t read the CA Penal Code, nor does it know where the prison gates are. Nor is there an allotted number of infections and deaths and it’s merely a question of who’s more “deserving.” If people behind prison are healthy and taken care of, people in the community are healthy and taken care of, and vice versa.
