Prisons and the Budget: Key Reforms Can Still Save Billions of Dollars

When Legislators returned from their summer break in mid-August, the California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) greeted them with its "Prison Population and Budget Reduction Package." The package came complete with the seal of approval from the Republican Governor and the Democratic leaders of the Senate and Assembly. It promised to reduce California's prison population by 37,000 over two years, and the associated costs by $1.2 billion this fiscal year. And the plan came awfully close to achieving the mandate of the three-judge federal panel, which ordered the state to reduce its prison population by 40,000 in two years.

But a month later, the bill that finally limped across the finish line in the Legislature will reduce the prison population by only 16,000, and comes up well over $200 million short in needed savings. As a result, the plan that the Governor and the CDCR presented to the three-judge panel last week reduces the prison population by less than 12,000. That falls far short of the mark needed to restore constitutional conditions in California's prisons and leaves the tragic and curable problem of out of control corrections spending squarely in the Governor's lap.

That is not to say that nothing was accomplished by the much maligned Legislature. The Legislature did actually deliver on some real reforms to the criminal justice system, for the first time since the 1970s.

Most significantly, the correction's reform bill that ultimately passed the Legislature will implement risk-based supervision of parolees, finally overhauling the most dysfunctional and oft-criticized part of California's prison system. For years, expert panel after expert panel has concluded that California's revolving door parole system is the single greatest factor contributing to overcrowding in prisons, and that it fails to provide any benefit to public safety.

Under the new risk-based model, supervision will increase for the most serious and violent offenders-those convicted of sex offenses or other offenses against people, and those identified as high risk using an evidence-based assessment tool. In order to concentrate scarce resources on these high-risk offenders, supervision of low risk offenders will be reduced and these latter parolees will no longer be subject to parole revocation. That means fewer parolees returning to prison for technical violations like missing an appointment or failing a drug test.

There are additional promising elements. The bill creates incentives for counties to keep probationers in their local communities rather than sending them off to state prisons when they commit small violations. Counties that successfully reduce the number of probationers sent to prison on small violations will be rewarded with additional funding to support their programs. Federal stimulus money will be used to kick start the plan. This reform correctly rewards counties that take responsibility for reducing crime and reducing the burden on the state's prison system.

Rightly, the Legislature also raised the dollar threshold that classifies a property crime as a felony - to $950 from $400. This new adjustment simply reflects the rate of inflation since the last time the thresholds were set in 1982. Sadly, the impact of this reform was blunted significantly by excluding the single most relevant Penal Code section: grand theft. The dollar threshold distinguishing the felony of grand theft from the misdemeanor of petty theft remains inexplicably frozen at the 1982 level. The CDCR projects an additional 2,700 people would be diverted from prison if this reform were adopted.

Last on the list of the positives, the Legislature agreed to increase the award of credits for people in prison who follow the rules, and to create incentives for inmates to participate in programs while in prison. The final bill authorizes up to six weeks worth of enhanced credit for completing rehabilitation, education, and vocation programs in prison. Rewarding participation in education and rehabilitation programs is a great idea, one that actually helps reduce crime by ensuring that people leave prison with more life skills than when they entered. But the effectiveness of this reform was also blunted due to the fact that the CDCR just eliminated $280 million in funding for these same programs.

That rounds out the positive accomplishments, such as they are. What other good ideas hit the cutting room floor?

Shockingly, the Legislature did not agree with the Governor and the CDCR that four of the most petty "wobblers"-crimes that can be charged as either misdemeanors or felonies-should be converted to straight misdemeanors. Rejecting common sense, the Legislature bowed to pressure from law enforcement and agreed to continue filling expensive prison cells with pizza thieves.

Likewise, the Legislature rejected the Governor and CDCR's plan for alternative custody for the lowest risk offenders. Similar to a program instituted by Sheriff Lee Baca in Los Angeles, the plan would have transferred elderly, medically infirm, and low risk offenders with less than 12 months to serve to home detention with GPS monitoring. This proposal was carefully designed to remove the lowest risk and most costly inmates from the system, the very inmates that the CDCR has failed to properly care for, resulting in the federal court takeover of the prison medical system. But the plan was labeled "early release" by opponents and fell victim to political rhetoric that ignored the logic of the plan.

Without these proposals in play, the Governor and the CDCR are left with few choices. Thus, the underwhelming plan submitted to the three-judge panel in mid-September. Yet there remain several significant reforms that the Governor can implement unilaterally that would at least achieve significant cost savings for the state, even if they would not help us to achieve the reduced prison population goals.

For example, we could keep young offenders closer to home and phase out the outrageously expensive CDCR Division of Juvenile Justice. With an astronomical recidivism rate of 72 percent and an annual budget of $436 million for only 1,600 young people, the Division of Juvenile Justice has been labeled an expensive failure by Republicans and Democrats alike. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights has proposed phasing out all of the remaining youth prisons over the next three years, diverting young people to county custody, and allocating half of the Division of Juvenile Justice budget to support effective local treatment programs. This reform, which the Governor and the CDCR can implement on their own, would save the state more than $200 million annually.

Similarly, the Governor could save $1 billion over five years if he simply converted all death sentences to permanent imprisonment. There is wide agreement that California's death penalty is dysfunctional, serves no purpose, and in practice causes decades of additional suffering to murder victims' families. Yet, California remains on track to spend $1 billion in the next five years to maintain the death penalty system and to build a new death row. In an editorial published Sept. 28, the New York Times characterizes the death penalty as an ineffective economic drain on governments, pointing to California as the prime example and noting that California has executed 13 people since 1976 for a total of about $250 million per execution - a figure revealed by an investigative report in the Los Angeles Times in 2005. The costs of death penalty cases have only increased since then. The Governor should end the death penalty now in favor of a penalty that a majority of Californians prefer: permanent imprisonment.

Ultimately, the Legislature came up short on reducing both the prison population and the costs of the prison system. The Governor needs to make up the difference. To do the job right, he will need to delve deep into the sobering realities of our criminal justice system and its failures. If he does, he will find well-conceived reform proposals that offer tenable, enduring solutions for shoring up the state's fiscal integrity, strengthening community safety, and making our criminal justice system fairer and more effective.

Natasha Minsker is the Death Penalty Policy Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. She is the author of numerous articles and reports on the death penalty in California including the Hidden Death Tax: The Secret Costs of Seeking Execution in California.