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[June 29, 2006]

EDITORIAL: Thinking outside the cell block

(Appeal-Democrat (Marysville, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jun. 29--June 29, 2006 - Gov. Schwarzenegger's decision to call for a special legislative session to consider four specific prison-reform proposals may be intended to divert attention from recent criticism by a special master appointed by a federal court dealing with prison problems in California.


The governor's proposals, however, studiously ignore the problems that put prison reform on the agenda in the first place.

Federal courts have found that, as the recent special master's report put it, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation "internal affairs investigations and administrative discipline were plagued by systemic problems that, in terms of actual practice, rendered investigations and discipline entirely ineffectual."

In addition, the report found "a pervasive code of silence in the CDCR (a problem so ingrained in California prisons that there was a code of silence about the code of silence itself), a pattern and practice of interference with administrative and criminal investigations at Pelican Bay State Prison by representatives of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, and the inappropriate termination of the Post Powers investigations by the former Director of Corrections."

Other reports have noted that health care in prisons is virtually nonexistent.

The report went on that while the Schwarzenegger administration cooperated with the courts on trying to fix these problems, since the appointment of former Davis administration Cabinet officer Susan Kennedy, the administration has retreated from reform efforts and cozied up to the prison guards' union, whose overweening power was the source of many of the problems in prisons.

So what did the administration come up with?

A special session on prison reform to be focused narrowly on four issues:

* Special facilities for nonviolent female inmates;

* Creating special "re-entry" facilities in which prisoners would be moved closer to home and given counseling and other help before returning to society, hopefully to reduce recidivism;

* Funding (perhaps through bonds) for two new prisons; and

* Improving contracting procedures so new facilities can be built faster and cheaper.

With the possible exception of going into debt to finance new prisons, these are generally constructive ideas. And if they really reduced overcrowding in prisons, they might make the climate inside a bit less brutal. But they do not address the problems that have made the California prison system a scandal.

Overcrowding in prisons is also a function of sentencing laws.

California's prison population has increased sevenfold in the past 25 years; that includes the highest rate of drug incarceration in the nation, according to the Justice Policy Institute. While it is appropriate to put violent offenders away for a long time, prisons are overcrowded mainly because so many marginal activities have been criminalized. If we're serious about creating a more humane society and a prison system that is not simply a graduate school in how to get away with it the next time, we need to look at reforming drug laws, the "three strikes" law and harsh sentences for marginally harmful activities.

The governor's special session won't address any of these problems, which is too bad.

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