Prisons and Budgets

Today’s NYTimes editorial “Prisons and Budgets” at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04mon3.html?ref=opinion lauds state legislatures for corrections policy changes with positive fiscal impact. The piece calls 3-Strikes “overly harsh” and calls the Florida law mandating serving certain percentages of sentences “dubious corrections policy and terrible fiscal policy.”

My favorite citation is their use of the ACLU National Prison Project’s new report “Michigan Breaks the Logjam: A New Model for Reducing Prison Populations.” Michigan reduced its prison population by over 8% in about half a year, primarily through justice reinvestment. This leads me to think about how many more teachers, students, doctors, nurses, patients, etc. California could afford to subsidize, were we to reduce our state prison population by as much as 8%.

Sentencing Commission to re-evaluate mandatory minimums

Today’s Wall Street Journal points out that October’s National Defense Authorization Act tasks the U.S. Sentencing Commission with reviewing federal mandatory minimum sentencing. Mandatory minimums, which remove judicial discretion in sentencing, are almost always for drug crimes, and have greatly contributed to the explosion in the federal prison population. This is the first issue I’ve seen the Fraternal Order of Police take a position aligned with Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

When I moved to California from Rhode Island, it had the highest unemployment rate of any state besides Michigan, making sentencing reform a high economic priority. Sure enough, this year the RI General Assembly voted to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for drug possession. The state legislature also decided not to return probationers to prison for violations other than the crime of which they were originally convicted. These changes, at the federal and California state level, would take a big chunk out of our corrections crisis.

CA pot arrest increases beat national average

Today’s SF Chron has a story on page C-4 about Dr. Jon Gettman‘s new report on Marijuana Arrests in the US. Marijuana arrests from 2003-2007 increased nationally by less than 3% annually, but in California increased by over 5% per year. Also, Californian African Americans are now arrested for marijuana possession at a rate of 270% over Caucasians, versus about 75% nationally.

Gettman concludes that the overall national marijuana arrest rate (between 3%-6%) is too insignificant to deter crime. So what public policy goal is served by using my tax dollars on incarceration?

Netherlands Closing Prisons

The Netherlands is closing 8 prisons, eliminating 1,200 corrections jobs — http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2246821.ece/Netherlands_to_close_pris — due to declining crime rates(!) and the economic crisis.

If crime continues to decline, the nation will have to choose between closing even more prisons, versus housing imported Belgian prisoners. California is to Belgium as Arizona is to the Netherlands?!

CJC Town Hall Meeting

Yesterday, October 28th, the CJC held a town hall meeting at 134A Golden Gate Ave. in an effort is to facilitate communications with the community and get some feedback. Unfortunately only about 10 to 11 people showed up including Tomiquia Moss, CJC head coordinator, and Judge Albers, everyone else was an interested party (members of the community court – not to be confused with the CJC, former CJC clients there to give a presentation, myself and one other Hastings student).

Presented at the meeting was an array of statistics about the past 6 months of the CJC. I will try to find out if the stats are posted online, but I will lay out some of the more interesting ones. Since its inception, the CJC has engaged over 400 clients in treatment services, 500 hours of community service have been served, 60% of the caseload is felony cases, there is an average of 24 in-custody defendants per day and 57 out of custody defendants per day. The attendance rate of felony drug offenders is 86% while the attendance rate of low-level misdemeanors remains at 22% (if you have been following the CJC you will remember that the first few weeks were slow because so few defendants showed up, as it turns out that is still the case for low level offenders). There are currently 250 active clients in the CJC, 98% of whom are compliant with treatment.

The most interesting aspect of the discussion revolved around the completion of the holding cells at the CJC. As stated above the court is averaging 24 in-custody clients per day, however the holding cell only has a capacity of 9. The court is now involved in trying to figure out how to continue to work with the same number of in-custody defendants because, according to Judge Albers, these clients are often the ones who benefit most from the services that the CJC has to offer. There is a suggestion that the sheriff may be able to bus the defendants back and forth, but this raises serious cost issues. Judge Albers states that this is “A problem that I am happy to have.”

The topic of this town hall meeting was how to break down barriers to employment in which two former clients of the CJC shared their experiences with fighting addiction and the lure of making quick money by selling drugs while trying to find employment with a criminal record. Ms. Moss then asked for any input from the audience, which did bear some good suggestions including mentorship programs between current and former CJC clients.

Regardless of what you think of the CJC, statistics show that it is growing quickly and may soon need another Judge. Apparently 575 Polk has two courtrooms, one of which has not been used in a long time, and the CJC coordinators are talking about adding another judge to help Albers with his growing caseload. It should be interesting to see how the in-custody matters will work when the holding cell is finally opened within the next few weeks.

Why is California Eliminating Rehabilitation?

Yesterday Prof. Aviram posted analysis of the newest Plata/Coleman panel court order. She points out, “The panel wants to hear more about the use of rehabilitation and reentry in the community as a population reduction measure that might actually improve public safety.”

So I thought I’d post this cover story from 10/17 last Friday’s LA Times. The piece highlights poignant personal stories of incarcerated, and formerly incarcerated, female addicts. It also provides a damning quote from a recent Schwarzenegger insider: “Kathy Jett, formerly Schwarzenegger’s top aide for prisoner rehabilitation, said gangs may attempt to fill the void created by the absence of programs.”

For purposes of this blog, though, the article also provides some worrisome statistics.

  • Rehab services lose $250 million a year, more than 40% of what they now get and a quarter of the $1 billion total sliced from the prison system.
  • “At the same time, the state is eliminating 45% of the seats in its substance-abuse programs for parolees.”
  • The featured rehab provider previously helped 756 women, and will now reach only 175.

These changes seemed almost calculated to increase addiction and recidivism. One might speculate that even the Governor is knowingly passing on the problem of prison overcrowding to the next administration rather than addressing any of its root causes.

More on Out-of-State Incarceration


California currently houses over 8,000 prisoners in privately-operated, out-of-state facilities. Contracting with private prison companies raises concerns about providing economic incentives for incarceration. I first read of American Police Force here on this blog, last week.

The Talking Points Memo Muckraker has been following this story all along. In particular, check out their excellent post from Monday, telling a fuller version of convicted felon and “‘low-level card shark” Michael Hilton bringing American Police Force into impoverished Hardin, MT.

Regulation of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Coming to CA?


Today the New York Times has a good story on state regulation of medical marijuana dispensaries. This debate has a renewed impact on California this week, as Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley told reporters yesterday he will resume targeting medical cannabis dispensaries for prosecution. Explicit state regulation of medical cannabis dispensaries would save California’s criminal justice system the costs of arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating people who fall into the cracks opened by the vagueness of this state law.

When California passed the original state medical marijuana law in 1996, no specific regulations were included for state regulation or licensure of medical marijuana sales, supply, or distribution. Since then, three digits’ worth of Californians have been prosecuted over this ambiguity (partial list here). 13 states now have medical marijuana laws (comparative guide here). In 2009 New Mexico became the first state to have its Department of Health license and regulate a non-profit medical marijuana distributor, a delivery service. This June, Rhode Island became the first state to legislate that its Department of Health will license and regulate a non-profit retail Compassion Center.

Before coming to Hastings this fall, I worked for several years as the executive director of the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition, RI’s medical marijuana community. Besides educating professionals, organizing patients, and forming a coalition, we lobbied for the 2006, 2007, and 2009 state laws authorizing and amending the Medical Marijuana Program. Throughout our successful efforts to regulate statewide distribution of this therapeutically beneficial substance, we faced the obstacle of the argument that we would make RI “like California, like the Wild West.” Now that New Mexico and especially Rhode Island have established regulatory models, California should model medical marijuana dispensary rules on other states’ effective programs.