2014 Election Postmortem: YES on 47!

With enough information to comfortably call appointments and shots, and with some distressing news for Democrats in the Senate, I’d like to focus on the important news on the local scene.

The most important of these for CCC readers is the passage of Prop 47 with 58.5% voter support. The proposition will downgrade several nonviolent, nonserious offenses to misdemeanors, and will allow people currently serving felony time for these misdemeanors to petition for resentencing.

A few things that bear mentioning: First, many of the people whose offenses are affected by Prop 47 are already doing time in jails, as a function of Realignment, and some of them might even be doing a split sentence, which means they’re not in confinement at all. As such, they are also already under the authority of local probation offices and not of the statewide parole apparatus. It would be interesting to know, therefore, how much resentencing would really need to happen. My suspicion is that the effects of Prop 47 will be mostly felt in the counties that did Realignment wrong–building more jails and not using split sentencing–rather than in counties that embraced the reform. The late awakening of the Los Angeles D.A. preceded this proposition only by a few months.

Second: if that’s the case, and if Realignment already did most of this, what practical impact might this have? Well, for starters, think of all the offenders doing time who could not vote in 2014 because they were classified as felons–even though they were physically doing time in jail. Reclassified now as misdemeanants, these folks will be allowed to vote in 2016. This is excellent news that affect many thousands of Californians. Also, there are several Third Strikers whose third offense would now qualify as a misdemeanor, not a felony, and would therefore not trigger the law at all. Those folks are applying for resentencing anyway, as a result of Prop 36 and thanks to the efforts of the Stanford Three Strikes clinic, but I think their chances of prevailing may have improved.

And third: The passage of Prop 47 doesn’t mean that people have become more humane or care more about offenders. The proposition was a classic humonetarian move, appealing to people’s financial prudence, and it was supported by folks of all political stripes, including Newt Gingrich. I only regret that the proofs for Cheap on Crime are already set, otherwise I could add a few hefty paragraphs about this campaign. It’s right out of the Cheap on Crime playbook.

Other than that: Prop 46 did not pass; it was a mixed bag of arguably good things and litigation-hungry things, and I’m not quite sure whether to celebrate or mourn its defeat.

And finally:

Dear Governor Brown, I congratulate you for earning a second term. As California limits governors to two terms, this is your opportunity to take the prison crisis seriously without worrying about reelection statistics. This is an opportunity to reform felon voting laws, to abolish the death penalty (which I know you think is ridiculous and expensive) and to make good things happen for formerly incarcerated people in their communities. This is an opportunity to outlaw Pay to Stay and to abolish long-term solitary confinement in California. Please, take this opportunity and let’s make history. Don’t let a serious financial crisis go to waste.

CCC Endorsements for the November Elections: Yes on 47 and Other Matters

After a bit of a hiatus, CCC is coming back with some election endorsements for Californians. In this endorsement list, I point out only issues that are particular to crime, law enforcement, and corrections; of course, your vote may be influenced by other matters as well.


State Measures

Yes on 47

Prop 47 would reduce sentencing. According to Ballotpedia, which faithfully summarizes the proposition’s text, if it were to pass, it would:

  • Mandate misdemeanors instead of felonies for “non-serious, nonviolent crimes,” unless the defendant has prior convictions for murder, rape, certain sex offenses or certain gun crimes. A list of crimes that would be affected by the penalty reduction are listed below.
  • Permit re-sentencing for anyone currently serving a prison sentence for any of the offenses that the initiative reduces to misdemeanors. About 10,000 inmates would be eligible for resentencing, according to Lenore Anderson of Californians for Safety and Justice.
  • Require a “thorough review” of criminal history and risk assessment of any individuals before re-sentencing to ensure that they do not pose a risk to the public.
  • Create a Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Fund. The fund would receive appropriations based on savings accrued by the state during the fiscal year, as compared to the previous fiscal year, due to the initiative’s implementation. Estimates range from $150 million to $250 million per year.
  • Distribute funds from the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Fund as follows: 25 percent to the Department of Education, 10 percent to the Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board and 65 percent to the Board of State and Community Correction.

Right now, there is about 60% support for Prop 47. As the Chronicle observes, it seems to be stirring little controversy, and for good reason: it makes sense. You’ll note that this is a classic humonetarian proposal–let’s not throw low-risk people in prison who shouldn’t really be there in the first place, and we’ll save millions doing so. The money is going to a fund that invests in education, victim compensation, and various therapeutic projects. The arguments against it can be easily dispensed with: it won’t “release dangerous people”, because it takes risk into account. It is supported, in grand Cheap on Crime fashion, by people from the left and the right alike, and by victims of crime, who would rather see energy spent on violent offenders. By all means, go ahead and vote YES on 47.

U.S. House

House Representative: Jackie Speier

Speier is one of my favorite politicians. Her work to prevent sexual assault in the military and on university campuses is admirable, as is her sensible approach to databases that would enable tracking down gun ownership. I should say, however, that if you’re a Republican on other maters, you could do far worse than Robin Chew, who would work to reverse climate change and who believes in sensible regulatory reform.

California Supreme Court

Of the three Justices up for retention, I want to mention and support Goodwin Liu, with whom I’ve had a chance to exchange views on criminal justice matters, and who is a sensible and careful interpreter of the CA constitution.

State Executives

Governor: No Endorsement

The race is between incumbent Jerry Brown and libertarian Republican Neel Kashkari. Kashkari has no platform at all on public safety, criminal justice, or corrections, which is truly astonishing given the amount of time the Brown administration spent on these matters, and his focus on “jobs and education” doesn’t seem to include the close connections between these topics and corrections. Obviously, we can’t recommend him. On the other hand, Jerry Brown has maintained that the correctional problem in California has been solved, has fought the Plata order tooth and nail to the point of almost contempt of court, and has practically extorted federal judges into giving him two more years for depopulation under threat of heavy privatizing. Between a bad track record on corrections and no interest in the topic at all, I think it’s a toss-up.

Lieutenant Governor: Gavin Newsom 

Yes, I know. Newsom is responsible for sit/lie in San Francisco. But do we really want Ron Nehring in the lieutenant governor’s chair? He wants to repeal Realignment and build more prisons. It’s a very antiquated and uninformed conservative position, one that most reasonable conservatives have already rejected. This one is a no-brainer.

California Attorney General: Kamala Harris, with Reservations

Having recently heard, with a heavy heart, about Harris’ intent to appeal Jones v. Chappell for reasons that don’t make any sense to me, and watched, with concern, her battle against truancy stigmatize kids and parents along the way, this one is not a no-brainer for me. The correlation between truancy and crime does not necessarily imply causation, and the cause of both–poverty and social neglect–is the one that should be addressed. This campaign is failing to excite voters, but I think it’s for the opposite reasons to those the Gold campaign assumes. We’re disappointed because we want Harris to be smarter on crime, not because we want Gold to be tough on crime. Gold supports legalization of recreational marijuana, but he is inexperienced and does not have thought-out policies on all the issues we are addressing. For what it’s worth, he urged Harris to appeal Jones v. Chappell, so death penalty issues are a toss-up. There doesn’t seem to be much of a platform for rehabilitation, though Harris can cite her collaboration with the Public Defender’s office on Operation Clean Slate.

California Secretary of State: No Endorsement

With Leland Yee, who despite his alleged involvement in corrupted dealings was a big champion for juvenile delinquents in the State Assembly, out of the race, we’re left with a choice between Alex Padilla and Pete Peterson. No one has asked them the important question–do they interpret the CA constitution as Debra Bowen did, to exclude Realigned felons doing time in jails as ineligible to vote? While both candidates speak about the need to improve civics education, Padilla seems to be more interested in actually reaching out to people to expand the vote, but Peterson has some good suggestions for increasing the vote via early voting and other options of convenience.

State Legislature: Notable Issues

Tom Ammiano is not running for reelection, and we thank him for his consistently incredible, sensible, and humane service to folks without voices and voting rights, including the thousands of people on solitary confinement. Neither in Nancy Skinner, who was an important voice for eliminating long-term solitary confinement. In District 17 (San Francisco) you’ll have to pick between David Chiu and David Campos. People I respect support each of these candidates for good reasons. I’m leaning toward an endorsement of Campos, because of his important anti-gang work, but am open to hearing more.

***

If all you remember from this post is to vote YES on 47, I’ve done my job.

Today at Noon, PST: Interview about Cheap on Crime on KPFA

Today at noon, PST, KPFA will air an hour-long interview I did with C.S. Soong from Against the Grain about my forthcoming book, Cheap on Crime. It was a great conversation. Here are some details on how to listen:

To Listen Live:
KPFA 94.1 FM in the Bay Area and beyond
KFCF 88.1 FM in Fresno and the Central Valley
Online, worldwide: http://www.kpfa.org.
To access the recording afterward:
http://www.againstthegrain.org/

BREAKING NEWS!!! Federal judge declares California death penalty unconstitutional

Astounding news: half an hour ago, US district court judge Cor­mac J. Car­ney issued a decision in Jones vs. Chappell declaring the death penalty in California unconstitutional.

The full text of the decision can be found here.

Judge Carney’s decision rests primarily on administrative grounds, namely, on the delay and uncertainty on California’s death row. Judge Carney points out that, since the reinstatement of the death penalty in California in 1978, only 13 people have been executed. Meanwhile, scores of inmates have died of suicide or natural causes, and 748 inmates are still on death row, litigating their case in pursuit of post-conviction remedies. These delays, writes Judge Carney, short-change the meaning of the death penalty and break its promise to the victims’ families, the citizens and tax payers of California, and the inmates themselves, who spend years, and frequently decades, in a state of uncertainty. Under these circumstances, California’s death penalty is no more than life without parole, with or without an execution at the end.

A cynical perspective on the decision would be that all the state needs to do is to streamline the death penalty and execute death row inmates faster. Indeed, that is what the California District Attorney’s Association has advocated recently. However, Judge Carney spends a considerable amount of time discussing the existing appeals and habeas corpus proceedings, and finds them constitutionally adequate. He comes to the conclusion that the only solution to California’s death penalty’s unconstitutionality is to abolish capital punishment in California altogether.

The big question is what happens next. Presumably, the warden is represented by the California Attorney General. However, Kamala Harris is personally opposed to the death penalty, and never sought it while she was the San Francisco County District Attorney. If the state does not appeal this decision, it has huge consequences not only in California, but nation wide. California’s death row is the largest in the nation. State-wide abolition, judicial or legislative, creates a critical mass of abolitionist states and might mean the end of capital punishment in America. But even if the state appeals to the Ninth Circuit, the decision is a prime example of the anti-punitive thinking that has become the mark of recession-era politics. Note that the decision does not go into death row conditions, humane execution methods, or any other dignity-based argument. Even though money is not explicitly mentioned, this is classic humonetarionism. Judge Carney is not arguing that the death penalty is inhumane; he is arguing that it is badly managed. As I point out in Cheap on Crime, these types of arguments have become far more persuasive in policy making and frequently succeed where classic human rights reasoning failed. It is of enormous importance that this logic has permeated not only the policy making arena, but judicial reasoning as well.

More updates in the next few days.

State Budget 2014-2015

Just in the nick of time, the CA Legislature has approved the 2014-2014 state budget.

The passed budget contains a few highlights pertinent to the criminal justice system, which can be found in the trailer bill, AB 1468:

  • Persons with felony drug offenses will now be eligible for CalFRESH & CalWORKS; 
  • The budget allocates $2 million for licenses/I.Ds for parolees; and,
  • There will be a presumption of split sentencing for realigned offenders. 

The final budget bill, SB 852, can be seen here.

Cheap on Crime: Forthcoming Feb 2015!

Dear blog readers – I have good news to share: My book, Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment, has entered the production stage at the University of California Press, and will be available Feb. 2015!

Since the book idea sprang from this very blog, many of you may find it of interest. The book takes a broad look (nationwide, but with a focus on California) at developments in the American correctional landscape since the Great Recession of 2008 and sets out to understand the effect the recession, and recession-era politics and rhetoric, have had on penal policies.

The book relies on two theoretical foundations: critical Marxist social history, which predicts that hard times lead to more public punitiveness aimed at the lower rungs of stratified society, and public choice economics, which predict that during economic downtimes we’ll only punish as much as we can afford. These two bodies of literature seldom speak directly to each other, but when read together they actually allow us to make sense of much of the punishment policies and practices we’ve seen in the last six years. The book identifies a new recessionary logic, humonetarianism, which allows politicians, lawmakers, public and private officials of all stripes to justify a retreat from the punitive policies that started in the Nixon era by calling for financial prudence and austerity. The book analyzes four components of humonetarianism: Scarcity-related rhetoric, the ability to generate bipartisanism and bring together strange bedfellows, new practices constrained by a leaner market, and new approaches toward inmates as burdens and service consumers. It also looks at the price we pay for advancing policies through cost rhetoric, makes some suggestions to social justice advocates, and tries to predict which, if any, of the changes we are making will remain in place when the economy improves.

I will be giving two talks about the book on professional panels in San Francisco this summer. The first talk will be at the Society for the Study of Social Problems and will focus on new perceptions of inmates.

When: Saturday, August 16, 12:30-2:10
Where: San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Room Foothill D
Panel topic: Punishment and Culture

The second talk will be at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting, whose general subject, Hard Times, is especially pertinent to the book subject. It will include an overview of the book’s findings and themes.

When: Tuesday, August 19, 12:30-2:10
Where: San Francisco, either at the Hilton or at the Parc55 Wyndham (exact location TBA)
Panel Topic: Law in Hard Times: Economic Inequality and the Law

Publication events next spring will include a special book party at UC Hastings and an event at San Jose State University’s Ann Lucas Lecture Series. There will be author-meets-reader events in various professional conferences and more book-related events – watch this space!

Please contact me if you’d like to host an event/book club/book party in the Bay Area, California, and Beyond, in early 2015.

From Reproductive Crimes to the Prison Industrial Complex

This coming October, the Hastings Women’s Law Journal will hold a special symposium on family and reproduction in prison, which is incredibly timely. Several important stories from the last few years have raised serious concerns about the correctional authorities’ responsibility for women’s health, pregnancy, and birth in prison.

First, as you may recall, there were efforts to restrict the notorious and common practice of having incarcerated women give birth while shackled. It’s fairly obvious why this is an extremely barbaric practice, and this ACLU report adds some important details.

Then, we heard with shock about a sterilization of female prisoners in California, with very questionable consent. This eventually yielded SB1135, which prohibits the practice.

And just a couple of days ago, this was in the news. Nicole Guerrero, a pregnant inmate in Texas’ custody, was placed in a solitary cell, repeatedly begging for help as her water broke and she was in labor, her cries for care ignored by the guards. Guerrero’s baby died, and the chronology that led to this horrific tragedy includes a nurse who works for a private healthcare contractor. Guerrero is pursuing a §1983 lawsuit against the prison.

There’s hardly anything I can say about this truly horrible incident and the cruelty that led to it that won’t trivialize it, and the basic facts behind it do not seem to be in dispute. My only additional thought about this has to do with the fact that Guerrero’s tragedy occurred in a public setting–a Texas state prison–but one of the people whose behavior was questionable worked for a private healthcare provider. I think we need to problematize the distinction often made by progressive commentators between state institutions and private providers’ institutions. At this point, and in the context of a neoliberal, hypercapitalist economy, it makes a lot less difference who runs the correctional facility overall than these commentaries would suggest. Many functions within state prisons–utilities, phones, cantine services, food, transportation, health care–are partially or completely privatized, as was health care in the institution in which Guerrero was held. Moreover, state actors are behaving like private actors in the market, and many of the corruption scandals and human rights crimes we saw in the last few years–such as Alabama’s Sheriff Bartlett’s profiteering off his wards’ starvation and former Philadelphia Judge Mark Ciavarella essentially selling juveniles to a private contractor for kickbacks–involved public actors. Private prison companies have not cornered the market on cruelty, stinginess, and indifference to human suffering. And wherever a wicked contract is signed, one party tends to be a public actor.

The only answer to this that I can think of is regulation that carefully examines which actors play which roles in exploiting human suffering for profit. Only recently, AB 1876 prohibited the common practice by which sheriffs received kickbacks from phone providers to give them the contract for prison phone services. There are probably ways for sheriffs to bypass this, and we will have to stay fairly attentive to those, but the bottom line is that the lines between the public and the private are so blurred in this economy that maligning “private prisons” misses the point. All actors in these dramas of human cruelty and profiteering–the state included–are acting in a laissez-faire, capitalist market, responding to market pressures, and trying to get ahead; all actors are vulnerable to the sort of indifferent, dehumanizing mentality that seems to have produced the tragedy that happened to Guerrero; and all actors, private and public alike, should be carefully watched and monitored by those who do not want to see more cruelty.
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Cross-posted on Prawfs Blawg.

Gubernatorial Budget 2014-2015

The Governor’s proposed budget for 2014-2015 is out and its full text is here. Public safety is addressed on pages 65-88 and the correctional budget is addressed on pages 89-93.

The budget proposes total funding of $9.8 billion ($9.5 billion General Fund and $320 million other funds), which is 9% of the state budget – only slightly less than our expenditures on higher education.

The report reviews the history of realignment and the Plata litigation, mentioning the state prison system’s commitment to reentry as per the Blueprint titled The Future of California Corrections (here is the Blueprint, for your convenience.) The report emphasizes CDCR’s commitment to expanding the rehabilitation menu to reach 70% of all inmates.

The report goes, at length, into the changes brought about with realignment, including the following useful classification of the prison population:

Still, the state prison population is higher than projected in 2013 – about 135,000 inmates vs. the 129,000 projected. The parolee population is expected to increase in 2013-2014 and decrease in 2014-2015, as a result of realignment and the transference of post-sentence supervisees to the counties. There are also more juvenile wards than projected, as a result of an increase in first admissions and in parole violations.

The budget report explicitly refers to the legal battle waged around the 137.5% capacity cap mandated by the federal court, and assumes that the deadline for meeting the cap will be extended by two years. Remember the $315 million that Governor Brown appropriated at the very last minute of the last legislative session? If there is an extension, the budget will allocate the first $75 million of the money to recidivism reduction (state reentry, substance abuse treatment, services for the mentally ill, and a special reentry facility) and the rest to the general fund. However, should the population cap deadline not be delayed, the money will be invested in private prisons “to avoid the early release of inmates.” You can see where this is going; the money is essentially there to more-or-less extort the Three Judge Panel and circumvent its perceived intention. The message is – play nice and give us two more years, in which case we’ll invest in rehabilitation, or you’ll get private prisons galore.

More interesting stuff: A projected expansion of medical and elderly parole. The age cutoff for the latter is 60, which means 5.4 percent of male inmates and 4.4 percent of female inmates (as of June 30.) If they pushed the age cutoff back to 55, which makes criminological and gerontological sense (people age faster in prison, and people leave crime behind at an earlier age), you’d be releasing 11.2 percent of men and 10.4 percent of women. So – a step in the right direction, but plenty of room for improvement.

The report also mentions two other savings mechanisms: nonviolent third-striker releases per Prop 36 and juvenile parole per SB260. While the report doesn’t explicitly take credit for them, it is a bit surprising to read such positive reports of these from an entity that fought the spirit of these initiatives for years.

A considerable amount of the money will be spent on improving health scores in state prisons so they can be wrangled away from the Receiver. Much of the money is allocated to fund litigation, to fight the Receiver and class-action suits in court; the rest of it on improvements to pharmacies, facilities, and staff training. The report mentions the impact of Obamacare on health care for county inmates as opposed to state inmates.

Lastly, there are some notable comments on realignment in the counties. There’s a proposal to make split sentences the default, but it still leaves a considerable amount of discretion to county judges, and would still create big disparities between county. Also, the report notes that keeping long-term inmates in county jails is not a great idea, but does not volunteer to take them back into state institutions en masse (as Manuel Perez has just suggested) because of the need to comply with the Plata/Coleman caps. The state is willing to take in offenders who are serving 10 years or more – that’s about 300 years annually – but that, of course, raises the question why people receive 10 years in prison for non-non-non offenses in the first place.