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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM | |
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| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers really want to alleviate prison overcrowding, control spending on prisons and avert a takeover by the federal courts, they should shift their attention away from building more prisons.
Instead, they should look at how California deals with nonviolent, low-level offenders such as check forgers, shoplifters and petty thieves.
In past decades, those offenders did their time at the local level. They were sent to county jails and community punishment programs, which cost much less to operate than state prisons. Costly state prison space was reserved for violent, repeat offenders such as murderers, robbers, rapists and kidnappers.
Today, however, our state prisons are bursting with more than 170,000 prisoners. But the problem isn't that there are too many violent, repeat offenders. Only 85,000 inmates are classified as Level III or IV prisoners, the levels requiring high and maximum security prisons. The rest, the Level I and II offenders, are in prison for property and drug-related crimes or parole violations. Most of them have terms of 18 months or less.
Putting these prisoners in higher security state prisons is like a hospital putting all patients in intensive care rooms. It is expensive and unnecessary.
The shift of low-level offenders to state prisons has happened over time with little attention. That should change during this special legislative session. Lawmakers and the governor can fix this problem. Two steps would go a long way toward fixing it.
First, restore the local role.
In the past, local jails and community punishment programs were the preferred way to handle low-level offenders. They kept the offender close to home, family, jobs, schooling and other services. Putting nonviolent, low-level offenders in state prison was seen as harmful because it broke local ties and sucked the offender into the prison culture.
Until 1984, equal numbers of people served time in state prisons and local jails. That's no longer the case. Today, state prisons house 170,000 offenders; local jails, 80,000.
While the state went on a 21-year, 22-prison building binge beginning in 1984, the locals have been starved of resources for jail space and community punishment programs. They face critical shortages, which means that more and more low-level offenders end up in state prisons -- and state spending on prisons continues to grow unchecked.
The state can change that by planning to build 30,000 to 40,000 county jail beds during the next decade, at a cost of $600 million to $900 million. That would enable the state to gradually return responsibility for housing less serious offenders from the state prison system back to the local level.
The state should fund construction and operating costs for these jails because they would house low-level offenders who would otherwise end up in state prisons. To make this work, financing would have to be stable and predictable. Some have suggested creating a State-Local Corrections Partnership Fund with a percentage of the state sales tax, but this is something lawmakers should negotiate.
Restoring the state-local partnership should be a top long-term priority of the special session that begins Monday.
Second, change sentencing.
Some sentencing changes are needed. Instead of state prison, why not have those convicted of some crimes -- for example, perjury, bookmaking, bribery, drug possession, receiving stolen property, petty theft with a prior nonviolent conviction, car theft and forgery -- serve their time at the local level? They could be in local jails or in approved community punishment programs such as work camps, day reporting centers, electronic home detention or restitution centers.
In general, California has an incoherent, piecemeal sentencing system created by legislators reacting to sensational events with "crime of the week" bills. The state needs a sentencing commission -- an ongoing, independent body that develops, annually modifies and monitors the state's sentencing guidelines for all felony offenders.
Previous attempts in California to create sentencing commissions have been seriously flawed and were defeated. They were set up as one-time bodies to impose pet sentencing schemes. But many states have successful sentencing commissions. Minnesota's, the first, comes to mind. California can learn from those examples.
The challenge of the special session is to get past the usual election-year rhetoric and do something long term to return the state prison system to a population of the most serious offenders. Restoring the local role and reforming sentencing are key steps to meeting that challenge.
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