As the national criminal justice commission bill starts its journey, Webb has a piece out in this morning’s Parade Magazine, which many of you may have received with your Sunday papers. The bottom line – which is nothing new to our loyal readers, but may raise the public profile of the problem – is as follows:
With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different–and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter.
The State’s correctional crisis is but one disappointing piece in a national mosaic of alarmingly growing incarceration rates. A recent more-or-less bipartisan attempt to solve this problem on the national level is Senator Webb’s new National Criminal Justice Commission Bill, reported on TPM.
What does this consist of? Here’s the full text of the bill. The initial remarks on the bill reiterate all the somber things we already know: booming incarceration rates, public punitiveness, the overrepresentation of minorities, number of parolees, high recidivism rates, high prevalence of gang activity, problems of addiction, and inmate mistreatment.
The bill proposes the creation of a National Criminal Justice Commission, who will provide evidence-based information on a non-exclusive list of issues, including comparative incarceration rates, prison administration around the US, prison costs, gang activity, drug policies, the treatment of the mentally ill, and the historical role of the military in preventing crime (?). The commission will make recommendations for reform in a report, which will be submitted 18 months from the date of the commission’s appointment. The report will be available to the public. The 11-member commission will be bipartisan and will include members appointed by Republican and Democrat lawmakers and governors, with expertise in criminal justice and corrections.
While, in general, more information and less moral panics are something to strive for, several questions can be raised:
How much will this evidence-based information contribute to criminal justice policies? Conducting our affairs based on empirical evidence has not been our strongest suit.
Crime is, for the most part, a local phenomenon; does it make sense to address it at the national level?
Don’t we already know much of this information, to no avail?
Will this be torn to pieces on the floor due to costs?
Stay tuned. ————- Props to Adam Maldonado for sending this my way.
I’ve started working on a broader piece about this. Here’s the abstract:
What do a community court, an expansion to Death Row, and an extension of incarceration periods prior to parole have in common? All three have recently fallen out of favor with California correctional policymakers, not for substantive reasons, but for lack of resources. This paper analyzes the impact of the financial crisis on correctional policies in California, identifying an emerging discourse I call “humonetarianism”. Humonetarianism is characterized by a value-free, superficial, cost-centered approach to correctional initiatives and institutions, which are assessed by their contribution to the state’s deficit rather than on their actual or even perceived merits.
The paper opens by tracing the history of humonetarian discourse and its interaction with the punitive, public-safety-centered discourse of corrections since the 1980s, and the actuarial warehousing policies of the 1990s. The history of sentencing and parole policies in the state shows how humonetarianism emerged when punitive policies, pushed to their logical conclusion, became untenable. The paper continues by providing several examples of humonetarianism: the 2008 correctional propositions (5, 6, and 9), the San Francisco Community Justice Center, the expansion to San Quentin’s Death Row, the decrease in parole supervision over foreign-born inmates, and the recent Plata/Coleman tentative decision. It then generalizes, from these examples, the main features of humonetarianism: cost-driven discourse, political bipartisanship, and a sense of emergency. While this discourse may appear, at first blush, to be less punitive than policies from previous decades, the paper argues that it is extremely harmful in the long run, due to its superficiality, cynical usage by interest groups, and shortsightedness.
I’ll be happy to get your feedback on the idea, here, or by email to aviramh at uchastings dot edu.
More news on several controversial portions of Prop 9, which we discussed here in the past. As our gentle readers may recall, Prop 9 put into legislation more victim involvement in the criminal justice system, including parole hearings. While some of this was not news – and in several counties, at least, was common practice before the passage of Prop 9 – this is the aspect that was prominently displayed on the supporters’ website. However, Prop 9 also included punitive provisions: lengthening parole procedures as well as limiting the right to counsel in parole revocation hearings for indigent defendants.
Yesterday, Judge Karlton invalidated the portions of Prop 9 that infringe on parolees’ rights, particularly the restrictions on the right to counsel, due to a contradiction with a permanent injunction, reached as a consent decree, in 1994 following litigation regarding parolees’ rights. The Sac Bee reports:
In the parolees’ 1994 lawsuit, Karlton found the state’s existing procedures were in violation of the 14th Amendment’s due process guarantee. His resulting permanent injunction was ratified by the state and is legally construed as a consent decree.
“To the extent that Proposition 9 conflicts with the permanent injunction, the former may not be enforced,” Karlton said in Thursday’s 34-page published opinion, which cited the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The Constitution defines itself as the “supreme law of the land, and its judiciary supreme in construing what the law is,” the judge declared.
“The state’s action is not given special deference by virtue of having occurred through the initiative process,” he added.
“Especially now, we cannot afford to be spending tens of millions of dollars on unnecessary privileges for convicted felons,” said Nina Salarno Ashford, representing Crime Victims United of California. She urged the state to appeal the ruling “to defend the will of California voters, and the pocketbooks of California taxpayers.”
Indeed. Because, what would get us talking about victim rights and due process for parolees, if not our pocketbooks?
Over at Governing Through Crime, Jonathan Simon offers some thoughts on the tragic murder of Oakland police officers, which he sees as an opportunity to examine our broken parole system. Simon spoke at our conference recently, addressing the issue of parole and dangerousness, so his thoughts on this instance, which, in hindsight, is all about dangerousness and public safety, are particularly illuminating.
Here’s an update to our continuing coverage of the medical services litigation; this round of the fight over funding the prison medical services, it seems, goes to the receivership. Yesterday, the District Court addressed the state’s refusal to pay Kelso the first $250 million dollars mandated by the court, by reinstating contempt proceedings against the Governor for declining to do so. The Chron reports:
In Wednesday’s ruling, the court said the state had acted prematurely in appealing an order Henderson issued in October to pay $250 million as the first installment of a plan by the receiver, Clark Kelso, to build new medical and mental health centers and renovate existing ones.
…
Henderson said the money was available in a bill the Legislature had approved, and scheduled a hearing in November to hold Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang in contempt of court for withholding the funds. Officials who are found in contempt can be jailed, but Henderson said he planned to assess financial penalties against the state until it complied with his order.
The state won a stay from the appeals court while judges reviewed the issue. But the three-judge panel dismissed the appeal Wednesday, saying Henderson’s order would not be final until Schwarzenegger and Chiang were actually held in contempt.
The state’s arguments – that the receiver was appointed illegally and that his construction plan violates federal law – can’t be evaluated until Henderson rules, the appeals court said. The court noted that the governor had consented to the receiver’s appointment and had not objected to his construction plan until last summer, when he balked at paying for it.
Lisa Page, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, said the governor would keep urging Henderson “to recognize the fiscal restraints facing California and the excesses included in the receiver’s construction plan.” She declined to say whether the governor would comply with Henderson’s order to pay $250 million.
Kelso’s lawyer, James Brosnahan, said the ruling clears the way for a trial on contempt, “something that nobody wants to do, but we’ll do it if we have to.”
As explained in the Sac Bee, this is slightly more complicated because of Tuesday’s ruling by the 9th Circuit Court, according to which the state’s argument against Judge Henderson’s order is still premature.
A three-judge circuit panel said in a 15-page opinion it does not yet have jurisdiction over the issue because Henderson’s order is not final, “but is rather an interim step.” . . .
The state had maintained Henderson’s order amounted to an injunction, which would be appealable, but the three circuit judges rebuffed that argument as well. “Although the state presents important questions, which may be matters of first impression, concerning the 11th Amendment, the PLRA, and the prison construction program as a whole, none of those challenges has been properly raised in the district court,” the panel said.
However, while the opinion was issued Wednesday, it was obviously written before Henderson’s Tuesday order rejecting the state’s motion to terminate Kelso and his construction program. In that order, Henderson did address whether he has overstepped boundaries imposed on him by the PLRA, finding he has not.
The judges pointed to Henderson’s orders creating the receivership and mandating the state’s obligation to fund efforts to bring inmate health care into line with the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment bar on cruel and unusual punishment.
Not only did the state not contest these orders, it consented to them, the judges recalled. They remarked that the state’s consent “may affect or even negate its claim of 11th Amendment immunity … and … the claim of violation of the PLRA.”
Schwarzenegger. . . explained that he has more freedom to make policy decisions (including tax increases, a break from past campaign promises) precisely because he doesn’t have to run for another office. . .
“The point was that I am not running for anything, so no one could threaten me, because I’m not running for Senate, I’m not running for Congress, I’m not running for another term as governor,” Schwarzenegger said.
The governor is termed out in January 2011, and he has never said what he will do once he leaves his Sacramento office.
Several people who couldn’t make it to the conference have asked for more information on Goro Toshima’s film we showed on Thursday, A Hard Straight: A Documentary About Doing Time on the Outside. The film is absolutely phenomenal. It provides an intimate peek into the life of three people – a tattoo artist with a poetic soul and strong gang affiliations, a drug dealer trapped in the Tenderloin, and a mother of three working on repairing her relationship with her children – who, upon release from prison, are trying to rebuild their lives. For more information on the film director, and to contact him regarding the film, visit his website.
If you’re interested in issues of women in prison, this upcoming event at the Sonoma State University Library seems interesting. The program looks great, and includes not only a panel and talks, but also a documentary and a performance.
Last year, seven of 26 staffers – including two part-timers – still were paid more than the $225,000 annual rate earned by corrections chief Matthew Cate. Eight enjoy large Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation pensions on top of their salaries.
And prison doctors and nurses dominate the state’s best-paid roster. More than 240 doctors or nurses, state employees overseen by the receiver, were paid more than the $226,359 earned by the state prison department’s medical chief.
The receiver’s request to raise salaries was granted by the court in 2006 in order to “improve quality of care, help fill vacancies, reduce cost of contractors”.
The first federal receiver earned far above what a public service mission entails — a salary and benefits package of $620,000. The current receiver, J. Clark Kelso, hired a little more than a year ago, earns $224,000 — in line with the California corrections chief’s pay of $225,000.
Now, after a year in office, Kelso has eliminated three positions and shifted most of the remaining 25 receivership positions to state pay scales. That’s the right approach and will save a few million dollars.
But beyond focusing on receivership salaries, Californians ought to keep in mind the major driver of staggering costs for prison medical care: The state imprisons too many old, feeble and chronically ill prisoners no longer considered dangerous.
Senator Webb is a man on a mission.
