A First Look at Inmate Diet: The Nutrition and Violence Connection

CDCR’s regulations about inmate diets start off with a commitment to provide inmates with —

a healthy and nutritionally balanced diet, served in an orderly manner with food flavor, texture, temperature, appearance and palatability taken into consideration. Current Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), and Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) as established by the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Science shall be considered authoritative in setting levels of nutritional need. Sanitation, safety, and food handling standards and practices shall be established and maintained in keeping with applicable requirements established by the Industrial Safety Standards (California Code of Regulations (CCR), Title 8) and the California Health and Safety Code (H&SC).

The standard menu for all institutions is a “heart healthy” low-salt, low-fat diet. All prison meals, save those served in camps, are pork free, and the regulations make allowances for vegetarian, Jewish, and recently added Muslim (“meat alternate”) meals.

This week, Emily Deans over at Evolutionary Psychiatry has posted links to several studies, conducted with double-blinds and control groups, which suggest that nutrition may play an important role in inmate violence reduction. Her first post cites two such studies, and her second post speaks of Gesch’s work in this field and his assessment that recommendations for vitamin supplements would not be heeded due to political reasons. I assume providing inmates with medication might be portrayed as “coddling” them and make for bad press, but maybe it should be considered as a public safety measure, considering its reductive effects on violence?

I’ve been trying to look at the Receivership’s organizational tree to figure out if anyone at the prison medical services did work concerned with preventative medicine, including dietary recommendations. Dear readers – if you can provide us with sample daily/weekly menus at CA institutions, or with stories on what friends or family members purchase at the canteen to supplement their meals, we’ll all know a bit more about prison nutrition.

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props to Yossi Kikayon for bringing this to my attention.

A Balanced Look at Guard Compensation

Sara Mayeux of the Prison Law Blog posted a guest post on American Prospect about the Wall Street Journal story we recently covered. Some excerpts follow:

Do you know what “overtime” consists of when you are a prison guard? Hours and hours of your life! Spent inside a prison! Doing the soul-crushing labor of corraling other human beings! Instead of, you know, playing baseball with your kids, or whatever else you might want to be doing. Who wouldn’t give up late-night doc review and expense-account dim sum for that? Quelle luxe!


Look, the solution to the high cost of prison staff is to put fewer men and women in prison. If, however, a state is going to put itself into the business of the custodial care of hundreds of thousands of men and women, then it’s going to have to hire people to oversee them. And, you know what, it’s going to have to pay them semi-decently, and it’s also going to have to allow them vacation. So what if it’s seven weeks of vacation? So what if they retire at 55? Considering what Philip Zimbardo taught us that being a prison guard does to a person after even a day or two, I wouldn’t exactly call that a sweetheart deal.


It is, indeed, a problem that California legislators and voters have prioritized punitive criminal-justice policies at such great fiscal cost and, more importantly, at such great human cost. It is a problem that the political economy of California has rewarded the CCPOA so handsomely over the past 30 years for its advocacy of ever-more punitive sentencing laws. It is a problem that California has nearly 170,000 men and women in prison. The CCPOA did not c3reate those problems so much as it’s astutely exploited the system that made those problems possible.

While Mayeux’s critique of Finley’s comparison is, of course, justified, I think she’s cutting CCPOA a bit too much slack. Exploiting a problematic system is not a ticket out of responsibility; ask the many California unions who do not hold the state government hostage, and the many unions that do not have well-funded, deceptive puppet organizations supposedly advocating for victims. And while a system vulnerable to lobbying is not unique to prisons or to California, the war on crime (as opposed to the war on other social ills) has unique features and has had unique consequences as to the urban landscape and life choices of Californians.

I would like to hope that Finley’s critique was not aimed at individual prison guards. As Luke Whyte from Voices of Justice reminded us recently, working in corrections is not a piece of cake. And while this calls for a strong union and good work conditions (as per the recently passed contracts), none of this absolves the organization from its cynical exploitation of victim voices to push the government toward solutions that push as further toward mass incarceration. I would like to hear more from CCPOA about their support of a sentencing commission and about community-based solutions. They have a substantial share in the responsibility we all have for the current system and they have the power to be an important player in fixing it.

Jerry, Cut This

Just a few days ago we reported on Governor Brown’s decision not to build the new death row, commenting that abolition would save even more. Today, Death Penalty Focus is circulating a cost-centered petition to Governor Brown to abolish the death penalty.

Please read and sign. This is our chance to take this crisis and galvanize it into something positive.

More Information on CA Prison Guard Salary from the Wall Street Journal

A tongue-in-cheek Wall Street Journal op-ed compares the benefits of pursuing a Harvard degree and a career with CCPOA.

Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.


As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he’s not even the highest paid.

The comparison, of course, makes no sense in many other ways, but it does draw attention to the salaries, justified by the “toughest beat” rhetoric CCPOA has used for years.

Pricing the Correctional Free Lunch: Bill Facilitating County Jail Funding Passes Assembly

A new bill, AB94 (full text after amendments here), facilitating funding for county jails, was passed by the CA Assembly. Here’s the stated purpose of the bill:

Existing law authorizes the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), participating counties, and the State Public Works Board (SPWB) to acquire, design, and construct local jail facilities approved by the Corrections Standards Authority (CSA). Existing law authorizes the SPWB to issue revenue bonds, notes, or bond anticipation notes in specified amounts to finance the acquisition, design, or construction, and a reasonable construction reserve, of approved local jail facilities, as specified. Existing law requires a minimum of 25% in county matching funds for projects funded under these provisions and requires the CDCR and CSA to give funding preference to counties that assist the state in siting reentry facilities, as specified. AB 111 of the 2011–12 Regular Session, if it becomes operative, instead requires that the CDCR and the CSA give funding preference to counties that committed the largest percentage of inmates to state custody in relation to the total inmate population of CDCR in 2010.


This bill would, if AB 111 of the 2011–12 Regular Session becomes operative, authorize counties that have received a conditional award under one specified jail facilities financing program to relinquish that award and reapply for a conditional award under a separate financing program, as specified. The bill would lower to 10% the required county contribution and additionally require the CDCR and CSA to give funding preference to those counties that relinquish those specified local jail construction conditional awards and agree to continue to assist the state in siting reentry facilities, as specified. The bill would cap at $100,000,000 the amount a county may receive in proceeds from SPWB’s issuance of bonds, notes, or bond anticipation notes under those specified provisions.


This bill would appropriate $1,000 from the General Fund to the CDCR for purposes of state operations to be used by the CSA in the 2011–12 fiscal year.


This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute and a bill providing for appropriations related to the Budget Bill.

From a humonetarian perspective, this bill essentially addresses the “correctional free lunch” problem identified by Zimring and Hawkings in The Scale of Imprisonment:

The parable of the free lunch is relevant to the discussion of prison population because prisons in the United States are. . . paid for at the state level of government out of state correctional budgets, but prison populations are determined by the number of prisoners referred by local officials and the length of sentences imposed at the local level. Since localities do not contribute to central state correctional budgets, the marginal cost of an extra prisoner may be zero at the local level of government, where the decision to confine is made.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s reform shifted the incarceration for several offenses from state prisons to county jails in order to address overcrowding at the state level. This change was heavily criticized by conservative lawmakers for endangering public safety, and opposed by local jail authorities arguing that there was overcrowding at the lower level, too. The new bill would supposedly allow localities to build jails more easily by fronting less money from the county budget before receiving state assistance. On one hand, this indicates fiscal commitment to the welcome trend of shifting population from distant facilities to their communities. On the other hand, this may be another initiative in the “if you build it, they will come” vein, which does not bode well for a decrease in prison population at any level. Also, note that this compounds the correctional free lunch issue: Facilities are built by the locality, but the state assumes more fiscal responsibility for them in the initial stages. Let’s stay tuned on this one.

CA Prison Crowding Crisis Event

The Bay Area lawyer chapter of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy is holding an event, free and open to the public, on California prison overcrowding.

When: May 10, 2011 – 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Where: Public Defender’s Office , 555 Seventh Street, San Francisco, CA
Speakers:

  • Wendy Still, Chief Adult Probation Officer, City and County of San Francisco; Senate Appointed California Rehabilitation Oversight Board Member for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Former Director of Rehabilitation for the California Federal Medical Prison Receiver; Associate Director, Female Offender Programs and Services
  • Jeanne Woodford, Senior Fellow, Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice; Former Acting Secretary, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; Warden, San Quentin State Prison; Chief Adult Probation Officer, City and County of San Francisco

And an introduction by:

  • Rebekah Evenson, Staff Attorney, Prison Law Office; Counsel, Schwarzenegger v. Plata

Attorney attendees – you receive CLE credits for attending the event.
To RSVP, click here.

Less Gubernatorial Interference with Parole For Lifers Under Brown

More this morning from the Chron on the Era of Jerry: Governor Brown interferes with parole board recommendations of parole for lifers much less than his predecessor.

Brown has reviewed 130 decisions by the Board of Parole Hearings granting release to murderers sentenced to life with possible parole and has approved 106, or 81 percent, according to the governor’s office. He has vetoed 22 paroles and sent two back to the board for new hearings.


In comparison, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approved about 30 percent of lifers’ paroles. Former Gov. Gray Davis – who declared early in his term that “if you take someone else’s life, forget it” – vetoed 98 percent of murderers’ parole cases he considered.

Now, here’s the nice bit, in which happily, facts somewhat trump the fear-mongering public-safety rhetoric:

For those who see crime as the overriding issue, Brown said, state records show that only a small fraction of the 900 life-sentenced prisoners paroled in the past 15 years have committed new crimes, compared with nearly 70 percent of other parolees.

Of course, even these cited statistics are presented in an inaccurate manner: The 70 percent non-lifer recidivists are, for the most part, parole violators, so their recidivism reflects not so much a return to a criminal career as the type of conditions they are subject to after release. A new report from Pew contains data that is sensitive to this breakdown. In 2004, for example, California’s 58% recidivism rate was comprise of 40% parole violators and only 18% commissions of new crimes. And, as the report states,

[i]n some states, released offenders who break the rules of their supervision are routinely punished with a short prison stay. California, for example, has for years taken this route, an approach that has helped to keep its prison population the highest in the nation.

Setting aside this misleading slant on recidivism rates, it is still refreshing to see Brown’s administration paying attention to lifers’ low recidivism rates without apologetic or panic-generating rhetoric. The low recidivism rates of lifers can be attributed to age as well as to the type of crime (murder does not tend to be an offense that generates recidivism.)

Brown Cancels Plans to Build New Death Row

The SF Chron reports:

Gov. Jerry Brown announced today that he is dropping plans to build a new $356 million Death Row at San Quentin because of the state’s budget crisis.


In a released statement, Brown said canceling the project – which has been in the works since 2003 – would save the state hundreds of millions of dollars. He said spending that money on a new Death Row while making budget cuts in other services would be “unconscionable.”


“At a time when children, the disabled and seniors face painful cuts to essential programs, the state of California cannot justify a massive expenditure of public dollars for the worst criminals in our state,” Brown said. “California will have to find another way to address the housing needs of condemned inmates.”


The new Death Row would have been able to house up to 1,152 condemned inmates. There are less than 700 people in state prison who have been sentenced to death.

Faithful readers may recall some twists and turns with the plan to rebuild death row. The construction was given the green light by former governor Schwarzenegger, but these plans were then halted through the efforts of progressive lawmakers that argued against the expenditure. The question is, of course: What now? Sixteen states have abolished the death penalty, several of them recently for cost reasons (humonetarianism at work here.) Governor Brown, would you like to save more money for our children, disabled and senior citizens? Join those states and abolish the death penalty.

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Props to Christoffer Lee for the link.

Petition to Save Troy Davis’ Life

Two years ago we covered Troy Davis’ probably wrongful conviction and his impending execution and participated in a day of action on his behalf. About a month ago, the Supreme Court rejected Davis’ appeal.    Richard Stack, who has been helping Davis and his family, has asked to share this blog post, inviting you to join the petition to the Governor of Georgia to save Troy’s life.

Please sign the online petition and forward it to friends and colleagues. We may still be able to prevent a terrible, irreversible, tragic miscarriage of justice.

Brown Defends Prison Guard Contract

Jerry Brown’s traditional alliance with CCPOA, the prison guard union, has resumed, much to the chagrin of Republican lawmakers. The Chron reports:

Overall, the six contracts would, among other things, do away with imposed furloughs, increase state employees’ pension contributions and temporarily cut pay for a year before giving top earners a raise in 2013. Schwarzenegger negotiated the same terms with other public worker unions last fall, and lawmakers approved those contracts.


But opposition to the new agreements was fueled this week when the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office concluded the six contracts would result in only about $179 million in savings next fiscal year for the deficit-plagued general fund, not the $308 million assumed in the 2011-12 budget approved by lawmakers last month. Those savings will disappear by 2012-13, the analyst said, when costs will begin to climb once again.


Republican lawmakers said the discrepancy is a major problem, because the state is facing a $26.6 billion deficit.

Brown’s election must have seemed a blessing to the CCPOA, who have had long and prosperous relationships with California governors and with Brown in particular (see Joshua Page’s informative post on that). Their abysmal relationship with Schwarzenegger, that culminated in a 2008 effort to recall him, is now behind them. Guard salaries were somewhat cut (to $92,000, which was subsequently balanced by allowing overtime); here are more details on the pay scale and contracts. We can expect the “toughest beat” rhetoric to resume its influence in California politics.