JOINT STATEMENT FROM:
Drug Policy Alliance, ACLU of Northern California, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and Families to Amend California's Three Strikes

Contact: Tommy McDonald (510) 229 5215 or Margaret Dooley-Sammuli (213) 291 4190

                                                          
Governor Calls for $3.5 Billion Reduction in Corrections Spending Through Prison Privatization

Advocates Criticize Plan that Lacks Any Sentencing Reform

SACRAMENTO – During his State of the State address today, Governor Schwarzenegger proposed a constitutional amendment that would bar the state from spending more on prisons than on higher education, and that would allow privatization of California’s prison system. Advocates applauded the call for significant cuts, but criticized the governor for leaning on a panacea of privatization.

"The governor is right to push for big cut in corrections, but the problem of our overcrowded prisons isn't a question of union corrections officers versus nonunion ones, or for-profit prisons versus state-owned prisons. It's about addressing the massive sentencing inflation that prior generations of governors and Legislatures indulged in. It’s about treating nonviolent or low-cost property crimes as misdemeanors, and treating only violent crime or big money crimes as felonies," said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director for the Drug Policy Alliance in Southern California.

The governor's proposed amendment would require the state to cut prisons spending from 11% of the state general fund (or about $10 billion) to a new limit of 7% (under $6.5 billion) by 2014-15; it would also institute a new minimum for higher education spending of 10% of the general fund (up from the current level of 7.5%). According to the Governor's office, these limits could be suspended "during a fiscal emergency or other declared emergency" or at any time "by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature." A two-thirds vote of the Legislature is required to pass the state budget each year.

"The Governor signed a budget last year that he said would cut corrections spending by $1.2 billion, but the state is on schedule to spend more on corrections than it did last year – not less," said Kris Lev-Twombly, director of programs for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. "Now the governor comes back with another promise to cut spending, and again no plan to achieve it. We urge the Legislature to pass sentencing reform this year to achieve savings now, and not just hope that the governor's latest gimmick starts working in 2014."

California's prison population has grown by over 500% since 1980, rising from under 30,000 to about 170,000 at end-2009. For example, over 24,000 people are locked up in state prison for nothing more than a petty drug offense at a cost of over $1 billion a year.

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