Nationwide, Pew says, 1 in 31 adults – about 7.3 million men and women altogether – are either behind bars or under parole or probation supervision for crimes. But in California it’s one in 36, slightly below the national average. Even so, that amounts to about 750,000 Californians, with more than a fifth of them in state prison.
Georgia, with one of every 13 adults in the correctional system, has the highest ratio, with Idaho, at one of 18, in second place. At the other end of the scale are New Hampshire, with one of 88 adults, and adjacent Maine at one of 81. Among larger states, Texas and Florida have substantially higher ratios than California while New York is much lower at just one in 53.
In 2008, Pew says, the 34 states “for which data are available” spent about $20 billion on prisons, probation and parole, but for some reason the study omitted California which spends more than half that sum all by itself when probation and parole costs are included.
This, in itself, is not news, in the sense that the per-capita imprisonment rates have appeared earlier in the New York Times. What’s important to stress is that this does not mean there is no cause for concern. Not only should we be concerned about our expenditure on corrections and our inadequate facilities, but every jurisdiction in which 1 in 36 adults is under the state’s punitive apparatus should take a hard, grim look in the mirror, regardless of how other states are doing. The fact that 1 in 13 adults in Georgia is in prison or under law enforcement supervision is no cause for rejoicing in California.
The important question seems to be whether CA is merely a private case of an American affliction, or whether there is something unique to how we do things in this particular state. If the former is correct, and CA is more of an extreme case than an idiosyncrasy, we should also ask ourselves whether these rates of imprisonment correspond with what Frank Zimring calls, in one of his recent books, The Great American Crime Decline. Have we managed to produce a decline in crime because of our imprisonment rates, or is this an unrelated trend? Zimring produces convincing evidence to argue that the decline is a rather complex trend, in which law enforcement and punitive measures play a rather small part. Notwithstanding the important conversations that need to be had on the state level, there is a bigger picture here, and the national war on crime has not, so far, addressed it on a fact-based, informed, moral-panic-free level.
As many of us were relieved to find out this week, the State of California FINALLY has a budget, (albeit dependent upon voters) of which corrections expenditures constitute 7.3%. A summary is here and the full breakdown by numbers is here. As in all state agencies, you’ll note cuts across the board for all departments. Several things in particular that stand out, in no particular order:
The general budget decreases from $431,285 in 2008-2009 to $394,996 in 2009-2010.
Treatment programs are cut down from $83,059 in 2008-2009 to $58,937 in 2009-2010. The cuts will be particularly felt in mental health treatment programs, which will be losing about 60% of their budget. However, the cuts in medical services are far less dramatic.
Prison security will suffer much less than treatment programs: from $91,651 in 2008-2009 to $87,077 in 2009-2010.
There seem to be less cuts to the juvenile justice system. Educational programs for juveniles will not suffer very much, and juvenile parole services will be funded at almost the same level. There’s even a modest increase in medical services to juveniles.
And, on the federal level, our friends over at the Criminal Sentencing blog have observed that the stimulus favors punitive over rehabilitative programs. Others at TalkLeft have numbers to support these arguments. This doesn’t seem to reflect what we have been promised by the White House.
1. Is this really going to happen after the final decision, or will we all wait for the appeal, which will surely come?
2. If we are about to dramatically relieve prison overcrowding, how do we guarantee that people don’t end up back in prison anyway, due to parole violations, and with precious little reentry resources?
Do you have any nagging questions about the aftermath of the District Court’s decision? Please post them in the comments, and we’ll try and answer them together.
In the course of responding to an email avalanche from you, our gentle readers, expressing interest in our conference (thank you!) and in the blog (thank you!), I came across the four-part documentary series Prisons Under Pressure, an interesting attempt to present the various perspectives on the overcrowding and medical crises in California prisons. It seems to be available as a pay-per-view, but I have just watched the first episode for free on their website. It’s a good introduction to the crisis for those of you joining us for the first time, and it provides a lot of insight into the financial part of the mess, which at this point may seem incomprehensible to many of us.
There are prisons, into which whoever looks will, at first sight of the people confined there, be convinced, that there is some great error in the management of them; the sallow meagre countenances declare, without words, that they are very miserable; many who went in healthy, are in a few months changed into emaciated dejected objects. Some are seen pining under diseases, “sick and in prison;” expiring on the floors, in loathsome cells, of pestilential fevers, and the confluent small-pox; victims, I must say not to the cruelty, but I will say to the inattention, of sheriffs, and gentlemen in the commission of the peace.
The cause of this distress is, that many prisons are scantily supplied, and some almost totally unprovided with the necessaries of life.
–John Howard (1777), The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with an Account of Some Foreign Prisons
May the return of the light this season, and this year, bring some light to our correctional policy.
In his 2001 book The Culture of Control, David Garland tries to make sense of the many contradictions in current criminal justice policy. As part of his “history of the present”, he argues that we seem to have somewhat of a split personality, believing simultaneously in two narratives: the “criminologies of the self” and the “criminologies of the other”. On one hand, we buy into a narrative that tells us that crime is a phenomenon that affects “others” – the underclass, minorities, drug fiends – and on the other hand, we are very involved in situational crime prevention and avoidance, crafting preventive strategies based on the premise that criminals are “just like us”, that is, rational, free agents, who need to be correctly incentivized in order for deterrence to work.
I have been reflecting on Garland’s analysis for a long time, and today it spoke volumes to me, when I tried to make sense of some of the great contradictions of the latest election results; on one hand, a presidential choice that promises a dramatic paradigm change, and on the other hand, the passage of Prop 8, the passage of Prop 9, and the rejection of Prop 5. What really drove things home for me was not just Garland’s terminology, but also reading these powerful words on this very blog this morning:
I was always under the impression that prison was something that happened to other people. Bad people, that did bad things; not people like me. When members of our social milieu had problems with the law, it was almost always of the sort that could be dealt with via payments and, when someone did on occasion end up in jail, it was only spoken of by adults in hushed tones and treated as some sort of mistake or aberration. All the way through my early twenties, even once I should have known better, prison just seemed like somebody else’s problem.
This is exactly what we have done in passing Prop 9 and, by doing so, keeping the “others” in prisons for longer, and making it more difficult for them, representation-wise, to leave. And this is exactly what we have done in defeating Prop 5 and, by doing so, extinguishing the flame of hope and possibility, in the form of drug treatment, for “others”. We would not have done so had we not been trained to think of criminals, drug dealers, drug fiends, corner loiterers, as “others”. We would not have done so had we had some empathy. We would not have done so had we felt that we are all in this mess together.
In many ways – and this may be surprising for some – I have come to see the rejection of Prop 5 and the passage of Prop 9 as the product of the same sort of social disconnect that produced the passage of Prop 8. Granted, Prop 8 is mostly a product of religious zealotry, while Prop 9 is more a product of fear; but both religion and fear have acted in this election as convenient vehicles for lack of empathy, and of separation from others. Indeed, the shared philosophy seems to be that others’ plight does not affect “us”, except in a way that harms us; that the only way to appropriate some of our limited resources is at the expense of someone else; that if the “other” is granted a right, or a window of hope, I am consequently deprived of something meaningful. That regardless of fact and empirical evidence, if the “other” leaves one of California’s correctional facilities, I and the likes of me are put in danger. That if the “other” gets drug relief unaccompanied by a conviction and imprisonment, I and the likes of me lose resources. And, yes, that if the “other” gets married, my marriage becomes less stable, and my children are at peril.
My concern is that, in our worry and our fear about the dangers of the “other”, we have created an impermeable and false boundary between “us” and “them”, whoever we take “them” to be. And it speaks volumes about the sense of alienation and partisanship that many have felt for a long time.
To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn — I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.
Let us hope that this sort of empathy, which transcends political, economic and religious boundaries, will reflect itself in how we treat one another and in our willingness to hear each other’s voices in the years to come. Let us hope that we will not be deaf to the plight of addicts – even when they fall off the wagon once, and perhaps even twice – as well as to the no less real plight of victims; to the happiness and support of families of all kinds and sorts; to the converted, overcrowded gym at San Quentin as we sleep in our comfortable beds. Let us hope that we can open our eyes, ears, and hearts, to acknowledge that, really, there is no “other”. Can we?
California’s correctional crisis is increasingly gaining national attention. In an editorial today entitled, “The California Prison Disaster,” the New York Times notes that California “has the largest prison population, the highest recidivism rate, and a prison budget raging out of control.”
What is to be done? The Times argues that “the solution for California is to shrink its vastly overcrowded prison system,” by moving “away from mandatory sentencing laws” and by reforming what is “perhaps the most counterproductive and ill-conceived parole system in the United States.”
The Times isn’t optimistic the state can turn itself around. “State lawmakers . . . have failed to make perfectly reasonable sentencing modifications and other changes the prisons desparately need. Unless they muster some courage soon, Californians will find themselves swamped by prison costs and unable to afford just about anything else.”
— “The state must take back control of the prison medical system, by developing a plan to work with an organization that can run the system for the State.”
— “The State must immediately take action to improve its management . . . and implement the recommendations made by this and other commissions, including expanding in-prison programs, improving prisoner reentry, and reallocating resources to communitybased alternatives.”
— “The State must re-invent parole, moving to a system of post-release supervision for certain prisoners to ensure public safety.”
— “The State should begin a comprehensive evaluation of its sentencing system by establishing an independent sentencing commission to develop guidelines for coherent and equitable sentencing guided by overarching criminal justice policy goals.
The problems with the California correctional system are so varied and so complex, one can easily become overwhelmed. Fortunately, there’s a great resource for getting a broad overview of the issues: Joan Petersilia’s recent publication for the California Policy Research Center, entitled Understanding California Corrections. Highly recommended!
California’s correctional crisis is increasingly gaining national attention. In an editorial today entitled, “
