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.

The Butterfly Effect of Public Policy

Reading the San Francisco Chronicle these days is like watching a traffic accident about to happen. The budget disaster is so alarming that every day brings news of future depressing decrees and policies.

The latest news come to us from the Governor’s office. Schwarzenegger’s hope that the initiatives would be approved  did not materialize; the problem got bigger. And so, a series of proposed cuts came into being. As reported on the Chron, some of the cuts include:

— $750 million from the University of California and California State University systems, bringing the total reduction over two fiscal years to nearly $2 billion.

— $10.3 million – Eliminate all state general fund spending for UC Hastings College of Law.

— $173 million – Eliminate new Cal Grants.

— $70 million – Eliminate general fund support for state parks, potentially closing 80 percent of them.

— $247.8 million – Eliminate the Healthy Families program, which provides health care to nearly 1 million poor children.

— $1.3 billion – Eliminate the CalWorks program, which primarily helps unemployed single mothers find jobs.

— $809 million – Release nonviolent, non-serious, non-sex offenders one year early, and reduce the Corrections Department’s contract work, rehabilitation and education programs.

Distressed as I am about the prospect of irrational cuts of all general fund spending to my home institution, which produces tomorrow’s nation’s foremost judges, policymakers, public interest lawyers, and business entrepreneurs (and thus extinguishing hope that we can invest enough in their education to produce people capable of solving the problems generated by today’s policymaking!) I think there’s a bigger lesson to be learned here. My concern is that the bottom line regarding prison releases will generate a public outcry that will gear discussion in a nonproductive way.
You see, everything is connected, just like in Edward Lorenz‘s much-quoted (and misquoted) chaos theory maxim, according to which the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas. I’m sure there are many voters and Chron readers who are being exposed, perhaps for the very first time of their lives, to the realities of the imprisonment project in California and how it directly affects their lives, their taxes, and their children’s education. For many years, since the passage of Prop 13, Californians have mistakenly thought that keeping taxes low and guaranteeing money for education had nothing to do with the invisible world of prisons. If you think about it, that is a bit like children who close their eyes, wishfully believing that what is out there does not exist if you cannot see it. So, many Californians may be finding out that many other Californians, who had been appearing and disappearing in their world, were held in massive, expensive institutions, and moreover – financing this institutions, in a world of scarce resources, is something to be considered, not ignored.
Prisons in California are not butterflies in Brazil, and their impact on our lives and wallets is much more direct than the connections in chaos theory. The sooner we understand that non-punitive cuts need to be made (albeit intelligently and after careful planning), the less we have to eat our future as a State, which relies on enough well-educated and skilled scientists, engineers, politicians, and, yes, lawyers.

Passing the Buck? Shifting “Wobbler” Offenders to Local Jails

As the CDCR struggles to handle the dismal budget situation, through the guard layoffs, other initiatives are on the table. While some prison expansions are still scheduled to take place, others have been canceled; and the question of inmate release still hangs in the air.

One thing that is being considered, as the L. A. Times reports, is the Governor’s plan to move inmates from prisons to local jails. The idea is to target a category of offenses known as “wobblers” – offenses that could be classified as felonies or misdemeanors – and classify them as misdemeanors, thus changing the jurisdiction to allow confinement in local jails rather than in state prisons. Local officials, who deal with overcrowded jails, have balked at this option, and the proposal’s fate remains to be seen.

Guards, Prisons, Education, and Prop 13: The Big Picture

Timothy Egan’s opinion piece on today’s New York Times places the recent CA vote on the budget proposition in context, and ties it to the prison crisis. On the guards, some of whom make $100,000 annually, he says —

The prison guard union, having swelled its well-paid ranks after voter mandates helped to produce a system where 750,000 Californians are either locked up, on parole or on probation, was upset at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for balking at their demands.

And on the disastrous impact of the proposition system on our priorities list, particularly with regard to incarceration and education:

But I do blame the voters. They’re part-time citizens, and not very good at it. They shackled the tax system back in 1978 with Proposition 13, limiting how much government could take from a homeowner. It was a reasonable middle class revolt. But then, in succeeding years, voters passed laws that packed California’s prisons with criminals (many of them petty) but also mandated that the education system get a lion’s share of the budget. On top of that, the voters made it nearly impossible to pass a budget. Then they walked away from their car wreck.

It’s a good reminder that we have ourselves to thank, and to blame, for the situation.

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Props to my fabulous colleague Dorit Rubinstein-Reiss for alerting me to this.

Selling San Quentin

The Marin Independent Journal reported yesterday on the Governor’s intention to sell San Quentin. The piece is very good, and brings up a variety of angles on the merits and costs of this initiative, including the recent costly innovations at San Quentin (such as the lethal injection chamber and the improvement in medical services) and the issue of costs. Here are some tidbits:

Marin officials Thursday cheered a proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sell San Quentin State Prison, part of a plan to raise between $600 million and $1 billion to help close the state’s budget deficit.

But although local officials who have long fought planned construction of a new $356 million death row complex at San Quentin welcomed the governor’s change of heart, they stopped short of declaring victory.

…

The state recently spent more than $164 million on new medical facilities and $850,000 for a new lethal injection room to replace the cramped gas chamber that was deemed unacceptable by a federal judge.

California has also already spent $17 million toward the new complex for condemned inmates. San Quentin, which opened in 1852, has 639 inmates on death row.

State and Consumer Services Secretary Fred Aguiar said the governor has not decided where San Quentin’s 5,150 inmates should go if the prison were sold, or which other prison would perform executions.

Aguiar estimated it would cost more than $350 million to move death row alone, because that’s what the state plans to spend rebuilding the condemned unit at San Quentin.

…

Beyond the issues of feasibility and costs, this also seems to be a proposal of symbolic magnitude. San Quentin has been a fixture in the Bay Area scenery for a long time, and has more visibility in public discourse than many other correctional facilities.

Is this sale a good idea? What do you think?

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Props to Simon Grivet for alerting me to this.

More News on the Sentencing Commission Bill

Following the Appropriations Committee hearing of the Sentencing Commission bill, it has been moved to the Suspense File. I made some phonecalls to find out what that meant. As it turns out, any proposal above a certain amount – not a lot, these days – or any proposal that saves money above a certain amount – is placed in the Suspense File, and all proposals in the file are then dealt with by the CA State Assembly in a quick-firing session. Since budgeting is a major consideration these days, the proposals might we weighted one against the other.

What impact might this information have on the proposal’s chances? As you may recall, the proposal was amended and its text is now very vague on what the role of the commission might be. Sometimes, vague legislation is passed in hopes that later it will be amended by the Senate. There are some encouraging aspects to all this, which suggest that the proposal might not die a slow death in the suspense file:

1) The proposal comes from Karen Bass, the Assembly Speaker. The previous incarnations of sentencing bills came from a variety of lawmakers.

2) The analysis that accompanied the bill created a strong link between sentencing reform and avoidance of overcrowding. While the expenditures and savings that might result from what is currently a very vague bill are unclear, a strong argument in its favor might be that this is a much better, more organized, and more controlled, alternative to the arbitrary release of tens of thousands of prisoners, and is therefore a more palatable response to overcrowding. In that sense, ironically, the bill has perhaps a better chance to pass in times of scarcity than in times of plenty.

More on the CDCR Budget Cut (again, from secondary sources)

I wonder why CDCR does not have the budget cut details posted to its website. All they have done so far, in terms of public information, is to tweet about others’ responses to the plan. At this point, therefore, I can provide some more details about the plan and about different reactions to the plan.

You may recall the $400,000,000 cuts from the Governor’s budget action in February, which included the Governor’s expectation that the cuts be implemented ““in a manner that promotes rehabilitation and preserves public safety.” The original budget action also mentioned some specific ways to deal with the problem:

Counties will recall that over the last several years a range of proposals have been put forth by a variety of sources — expert panels, the Administration, and the Legislature, among others — that aim to reform the corrections system, while realizing cost savings. These proposals include various approaches to parole reform, credit enhancement, increasing thresholds for property crimes, and other sentencing changes. It is not certain whether CDCR will pursue these or other means for achieving the $400 million in savings, but the CDCR Secretary and staff have assured counties and local law enforcement stakeholders that they welcome input and suggestions, given that any reform effort is sure to impact local governments and local public safety. CSAC will continue to be engaged on counties’ behalf regarding these proposals and any others that may be considered in order to meet the Governor’s directive.

Here are the main changes, as they appeared on the Chron, the L.A. Times, and the Sac Bee:

  • Reduction of parole population by 25% (about 30,000 parolees), focused on nonviolent offenders
  • Impact of reduction: lesser parole violations, less returns to prison – a projected reduction of 4,000 in prison population
  • Expansion of good behavior credits for inmates who successfully complete educational/rehabilitative programs – a projected reduction of 4,000 inmates
  • Increased use of GPS monitors for parole violators, rather than a return to prison
  • A change in the definition of grand theft, which will raise the threshold from $400 to $950 (the previous number was set in 1982!)
  • Elimination of 150-200 positions at CDCR’s Sacramento headquarters
  • Closure of one juvenile prison
  • As a concession to law enforcement opponents: proposed legislation that will allow police to search former prisoners and seize evidence of a crime from them without a warrant for at least three years after their release, even if they are not on parole

Some initial thoughts:

The decrease in parolee numbers is probably a healthy thing. I wonder whether it will be tied to severity of offense or to some measure of risk assessment (CDCR, please post the details on the website!). Most importantly, the hope is that the decisions on who is let off the hook will be in line with the parole reform suggestions that CDCR had begun working on.

The concession seems to be quite dramatic, its constitutionality seems questionable, and it certainly does not lie in CDCR’s realm of expertise. Search and seizure raise constitutional issues, and in the current climate, given that this exercise of power doesn’t have a price tag attached to it, I don’t see CA courts, or even the Supreme Court, dismissing such legislation. The Supreme Court has been typically dismissive of the rights of former prisoners in respect ot search and seizure, exemplified by its decision in Samson v. CA (2006), which allows for a suspicionless search of parolees. So, this concession will be a legislative expansion of Samson to non-parolees as well.

While a 8,000-inmate reduction may seem dramatic to victim advocacy groups, it is a far cry from the 50,000-inmate reduction suggested in the Plata v. Schwarzenegger tentative decision, and will have a very small effect on the overcrowding problem (not that releasing 50,000 inmates with no re-entry programs to speak of is a good idea in this economy, as we argued elsewhere).

One prison is closing down. Will the CDCR continue building other prisons? Three weeks ago there was still talk of looking for $810,000,000 (twice the budget cut!) for purposes of prison expansion.

What do you think?

BREAKING NEWS: -$400,000,000

That is the budget cut for CDCR. Today, CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate announced his plan to cope with the significant reduction in corrections budget. As reported on this morning’s Chron, Cate,

tasked with finding $400 million in cost savings, unveiled proposals Friday to save money by reducing the number of parolees by 30,000 and the state’s prison inmate population by 8,000 by next summer.

We knew this was coming for quite a while; Secretary Cate mentioned the dilemmas involved in crafting the plan back in late March. The objecting parties are, as expected, victim advocacy groups and the prison guards union.

There are no details of the plan yet on the CDCR website, but once the full plan is posted, we will analyze and comment. Stay tuned.

One Hand Criminalizeth, and the Other Decriminalizeth Away


Two interesting and seemingly unrelated events were reported on the news yesterday. The L.A. Times reported on the oral argument in the school strip search case. Here is the full text of the oral argument, and as can be seen from the Justice’s questions, suspicions and the War on Drugs played an important part in the courtroom discussion, as did concerns about the risks of over-the-counter drugs (the search in the case was conducted to find ibuprofen in the 13-year-old’s underwear). Two interesting examples from the transcript, which blur the distinction between drugs and pills:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Had it been the case that, as I recall, someone had — well, students were popping ibuprofen, weren’t they?
MR. WRIGHT: Yes, Your Honor.
JUSTICE SCALIA: I guess they might pop aspirin as well. I’m not aware that one gets a high on either one of those.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I’m sorry, your answer to me was they have to take it seriously. My question to you is, what is the administrator supposed to do? He sees a white pill; nobody can tell him what it is. Is he allowed at that point to search the undergarments or not?
MR. O’NEIL: No.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: He’s not?
MR. O’NEIL: He is not.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Even if it turns out to be — you know, I don’t know, some very deadly drug?
MR. O’NEIL: Mr. Chief Justice, we do not believe that this Court should get in the business of deciding that searches are okay for, for example, heroin, but not okay for cocaine.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: That’s what you just told us we should do, in answer to Justice Alito’s question.
MR. O’NEIL: No, I simply — the point was simply that if there is some common understanding that a type of contraband is generally secreted in a certain way, and the example is crack, and there is a known understanding that crack can be hidden in that way, that that would be relevant to the totality of the circumstances.
JUSTICE SOUTER: And I don’t see why your answer might not be different if, under the Chief Justice’s question, he didn’t know it was ibuprofen. All he knew was that it was a white pill. He’s not a pharmacologist, he doesn’t know what’s in it. Wouldn’t the reasonableness of the — wouldn’t the scope of reasonable search at least potentially be greater for the undifferentiated white pill than for the known ibuprofen?

At the same time, the SF Chron reports that, due to budgetary constraints, the Contra Costa DA’s office will no longer prosecute several misdemeanors.

Kochly wrote that he had long taken pride in saying that his office could do “more with less.”

“Unfortunately, we have now reached a point where we cannot maintain the status quo,” he said. “We will definitely be doing ‘less with less’ as a prosecution agency.”

The changes are needed to help eliminate a $1.9 million budget deficit in the district attorney’s office for this fiscal year. By month’s end, six deputy district attorneys will be laid off, and 11 more will have to be let go by the end of the year, Kochly said.

Criminal justice policy is made in many sites, on many levels, and by a variety of actors. It is not a well-planned, intentional conspiracy. As David Garland wrote in The Culture of Control, the “history of the present”, as he calls it, is characterized mainly by punitive measures, but there are also counterexamples. Note that the counterexample in this case has to do with costs (humonetarianism raising its head once more), and that in the oral argument the Justices are not preoccupied with the issue of costs.