Humonetarianism: Death Penalty Edition

John Van de Kamp, former California AG, says we can’t afford the death penalty: 

According to the final report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, which I chaired from 2006 to 2008, the cost of a murder trial goes up by about half a million dollars if prosecutors seek the death penalty. Confinement on death row (with all the attendant security requirements) adds $90,000 per inmate per year to the normal cost of incarceration. Appeals and habeas corpus proceedings add tens of thousands more. In all, it costs $125 million a year more to prosecute and defend death penalty cases and to keep inmates on death row than it would simply to put all those people in prison for life without parole. 

Van de Kamp advocates eliminating the death penalty and commuting all death sentences in California to sentences of life without parole. 

Doing so would incapacitate some of the worst of the worst for their natural lives, and at the same time ensure that a person wrongfully convicted will not be executed. And it would save $125 million each year.

Getting rid of the death penalty would undoubtedly be a great thing for the administration of justice in California, but Life Without Parole does have its own implications. To name a few: what about all the pending appeals and habeas proceedings? How would the Corrections Department transition all those folks from death row? Would the debate over “how much” due process we think we can afford change without the morally-fraught death penalty to galvanize it? 

Reformers are taking advantage of the suddenly inflated salience of cost to the public to push for policies that were total non-starters just a year ago, but the dark side of this strategy is that there is also no willingness to implement these policies in a thoughtful, rather than merely a cost-avoidant, way. How much deeper a hole will we be in a year from now if all our decisions are made with an eye on short-term costs? 

GOP opposition to Governor’s Proposed Mass Releases

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.

D.A.R.E. Responds to Governor’s Marijuana Legalization Initiative

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.

Senate Bill to Eliminate LWOP for Juveniles Passes Committee Hearing

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 Chron reports:

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.

CCPOA Fights the Layoffs Using a Public Opinion Poll


In order to fight the 3,600 anticipated job cuts, CCPOA launches a statewide poll, whose findings they present on their website. They report that “[w]hile some recent polls have found initial support for cuts, our poll probed deeper to learn that voters want to cut the fat, not the muscle.”

Among their findings, as cited from the poll:

  • 54% do not want to cut the pay and benefits for correctional officers
  • 65% do not want to lay off correctional officers
  • 62% support reducing the growth of administration costs in corrections
  • 63% support eliminating the 400 planners hired under the Governor’s doomed prison reform legislation who have been spending millions planning for prisons that have not been built nor will they be built for decades

The poll, while representing CCPOA’s mobilization (and understandable desperation) to fight the cuts, seems to have been framed and conducted in a way that undermines any conclusions to be drawn from the results. I am unclear on whether the quotes above the pie charts in the diagrams are the questions asked on the poll. If they are, they have been articulated in a non-neutral way that has probably contributed to yielding these particular results (““California has one of the worst inmate to correctional officer ratios in the nation. Laying off officers in our prisons will make prisons more violent and will increase the number of assaults on the remaining officers. We should not cut the number of officers in our prisons as a way to save money.”) Also, it doesn’t seem to be the case that respondents have been offered the choice of other cuts, such as rehabilitative programs, parole, or re-entry. As much of the new research on public punitiveness suggests, when the public is offered such options, it becomes far less punitive. Read all about it in this fabulous book, edited by Julian Roberts et al. This sort of research needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully, and I would encourage lawmakers in Sacramento not to take this particular poll results seriously when making decisions regarding the budget cuts. There may be excellent reasons not to lay off so many prison guards, but this poll is not one of them.

Sentencing Commission Bill Passes Third Reading at Assembly

Yesterday, the Sentencing Commission Bill, in its amended shortened version, passed its third reading at the Assembly (50 ayes, 29 noes). The breakdown by assembly members is here. If I’m not mistaken (and readers with more legislative savvy are welcome to correct me), the bill will now pass to the Senate hands.

Sentencing Commission Bill Update – and a Trailer for an Excellent Film

Earlier this month, we reported on the Sentencing Commission Bill’s move to the suspense file. The bill has passed on the committee (12 ayes, 5 nos) and is moving on to a third reading at the Assembly. Perhaps this reflects the wish for a more systematic alternative to the threatened mass-releases to relieve overcrowding, but your guess is as good as mine.

Incidentally, I am posting this from the Law and Society Annual Meeting in Denver, where I just had the chance to see Susanne Mason‘s fantastic documentary Writ Writer, about Fred Cruz, the inmate who started the avalanche that would end in the Ruiz v. Estelle case, which revolutionized the cruel, slavery-like Texas prison system. It is absolutely fantastic and I strongly recommend it. More on the film here.